Acute pancreatitis: the difficulties of diagnosis and therapy.

Acute pancreatitis in children is uncommon but is being recognized frequently. Twenty-four children provided clinical data to review the various manifestations and therapy of acute pancreatitis, all of these patients having survived a clinical episode. Recognition of acute pancreatitis has been improved by the advent of new diagnostic procedures such as serum amylase isoenzymes, amylase/creatinine ratio, ultrasonography, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan, and peritoneal lavage. The causative factors in our series were: trauma, biliary disease,, viral (mumps), and steroid therapy. Treatment of acute pancreatitis was nonsurgical unless a specific surgical lesion was present.