Alcoholic chronic pancreatitis with simultaneous multiple severe complications--extrahepatic portal obliteration, obstructive jaundice and duodenal stricture.

The major complications of chronic pancreatitis are malabsorption, diabetes mellitus, pancreatic calcification and pseudocysts. Sinistral portal hypertension due to splenic vein thrombosis, obstructive jaundice and duodenal stricture have also been reported as complications of chronic pancreatitis. However, a case having all these three complications at the same time is relatively rare. We present a case of chronic alcoholic pancreatitis complicated with simultaneous multiple severe complications. Although biliary drainage is usually a useful treatment for reducing the bilirubin level in the patients with obstructive jaundice, jaundice was hardly improved by the percutaneous transhepatic cholangio-drainage (PTCD) in this case. We discussed the cause of the failure in reducing the jaundice and reviewed the previous reports of complications of pancreatitis.