A case report of severe acute pancreatitis with infected necrosis and concomitant Coronavirus Disease‑19 (COVID‑19): a nosocomial infection or delayed respiratory manifestation of viral disease?

The association between COVID‑19 and acute pancreatitis (AP) has been extensively analyzed in recent research and review papers worldwide. It should be noted that most studies have focused on AP as a COVID‑19 complication and/or an extra‑pulmonary manifestation of the disease, although the investigation reports on the cases of prior pancreatitis and subsequent COVID‑19 infection are limited. The aim of this case report is to describe the treatment protocol and clinical outcome of a patient with acute necrotizing pancreatitis who developed nosocomial COVID‑19.. Case presentation. The data were collected from patient S., a 42‑year‑old male admitted with AP to the intensive care unit of Kyiv City Clinical Emergency Hospital, in October 2020. This study was reviewed and approved by the local Ethics Committee (Protocol No 25‑15‑60). The patient signed written informed consent to participate in the study, after having been informed of all relevant aspects that could influence his decision. The patient, primarily diagnosed with AP, was admitted to the hospital without a PCR test for detecting SARS‑CoV‑2. 21 days after his admission to the hospital, the patient developed COVID‑19. AP progression to severe AP with infected necrosis, the development of systemic inflammatory response syndrome and multiple organ failure necessitated operative pancreatic debridement, which was postponed due to severe acute respiratory failure. Operative pancreatic debridement was performed on the 45th day of hospital stay after the resolution of COVID‑19‑associated pneumonia. The postoperative period was typical for the disease severity and the extent of the surgery, and was complicated by external pancreatic and colonic fistulas. The length of hospital stay for this patient was 115 days which included 20 days of treatment and monitoring in the intensive care unit due to pneumonia. He was discharged after clinical symptom improvement. Conclusions. It is imperative to screen patients presenting with AP for SARS‑CoV‑2 in order to avoid misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment strategy. Further detailed investigation of mechanisms of pancreatic injury in patients with SARS‑CoV‑2 is necessary.

Association between Timing of Surgical Intervention and Mortality in 15,813 Acute Pancreatitis

Objective. In order to find the quantitative relationship between timing of surgical intervention and risk of death in necrotizing pancreatitis. Methods. The generalized additive model was applied to quantitate the relationship between surgical time (from the onset of acute pancreatitis to first surgical intervention) and risk of death adjusted for demographic characteristics, infection, organ failure, and important lab indicators extracted from the Electronic Medical Record of West China Hospital of Sichuan University. Results. We analyzed 1,176 inpatients who had pancreatic drainage, pancreatic debridement, or pancreatectomy experience of 15,813 acute pancreatitis retrospectively. It showed that when surgical time was either modelled alone or adjusted for infection or organ failure, an L-shaped relationship between surgical time and risk of death was presented. When surgical time was within 32.60 days, the risk of death was greater than 50%. Conclusion. There is an L-shaped relationship between timing of surgical intervention and risk of death in necrotizing pancreatitis.

Measured versus Estimated Blood Loss: Interim Analysis of a Prospective Quality Improvement Study

Estimated blood loss (EBL) is an increasingly important factor used to predict outcomes, such as morbidity and mortality, length of stay, and readmissions, after major abdominal operations. However, blood loss is difficult to estimate, with frequent under- and overestimations, consequences of which can be potentially dangerous for individual patients and confounding for scoring systems relying on EBL. We hypothesized that EBL is often inaccurate and have pro-spectively enrolled consecutive patients undergoing major elective intra-abdominal operations. Actual hemoglobin levels were measured and used to calculate the measured blood loss (MBL), which was compared with the EBL, as estimated both by surgeons (sEBL) and anesthesiologists (aEBL). Of 23 eligible cases at interim analysis, pancreaticoduodenectomy (n = 8) was the most common, followed by colectomy (n = 3), hepatectomy (n = 3) and gastrectomy (n = 2), biliary excision and reconstruction (n = 2), combined gastrectomy + colectomy (n = 1), radical nephrectomy (n = 1), open cholecystectomy (n = 1), pancreatic debridement (n = 1), and exploratory laparotomy (n = 1). aEBL overestimated MBL by 192 mL (143%) on average. The aEBL was significantly greater than the MBL ( P = 0.004), whereas the sEBL was significantly less than the MBL ( P = 0.009). In conclusion, surgeons significantly underestimate and anesthesiologists significantly overestimate EBL. This finding impacts not only immediate patient care but also the interpretation of scoring systems relying on EBL.