Original article—liver, pancreas, and biliary tract
Early Fluid Resuscitation Reduces Morbidity Among Patients With Acute Pancreatitis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cgh.2011.03.032Get rights and content

Background & Aims

Early fluid resuscitation is recommended to reduce morbidity and mortality among patients with acute pancreatitis, although the impact of this intervention has not been quantified. We investigated the association between early fluid resuscitation and outcome of patients admitted to the hospital with acute pancreatitis.

Methods

Nontransfer patients admitted to our center with acute pancreatitis from 1985–2009 were identified retrospectively. Patients were stratified into groups on the basis of early (n = 340) or late resuscitation (n = 94). Early resuscitation was defined as receiving ≥one-third of the total 72-hour fluid volume within 24 hours of presentation, whereas late resuscitation was defined as receiving ≤one-third of the total 72-hour fluid volume within 24 hours of presentation. The primary outcomes were frequency of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), organ failure, and death.

Results

Early resuscitation was associated with decreased SIRS, compared with late resuscitation, at 24 hours (15% vs 32%, P = .001), 48 hours (14% vs 33%, P = .001), and 72 hours (10% vs 23%, P = .01), as well as reduced organ failure at 72 hours (5% vs 10%, P < .05), a lower rate of admission to the intensive care unit (6% vs 17%, P < .001), and a reduced length of hospital stay (8 vs 11 days, P = .01). Subgroup analysis demonstrated that these benefits were more pronounced in patients with interstitial rather than severe pancreatitis at admission.

Conclusions

In patients with acute pancreatitis, early fluid resuscitation was associated with reduced incidence of SIRS and organ failure at 72 hours. These effects were most pronounced in patients admitted with interstitial rather than severe disease.

Section snippets

Methods

The study was approved by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects #21847. Patients presenting directly to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, an academic tertiary care hospital in Lebanon, NH, from 1985–2009 with the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis were identified retrospectively by using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, codes. Only nontransferred patients were included in this study, and the primary diagnosis at admission had to be acute pancreatitis to be

Results

Seven hundred one patients were admitted to our medical center from 1985–2009 with a primary diagnosis of acute pancreatitis. Two hundred twenty-two patients were admitted in transfer, and 45 had incomplete or missing fluid administration data, leaving 434 nontransferred patients who were included in the study. Three hundred forty patients were identified as early resuscitation, and 94 patients were identified as late resuscitation. As shown in Table 1, there were no meaningful differences in

Discussion

This study demonstrates that patients admitted with acute pancreatitis receiving early fluid resuscitation have lower rates of SIRS and organ failure, shorter hospitalizations, and less need for ICU admission than do patients who are not resuscitated as aggressively. This effect is observed only in patients with interstitial disease at admission, suggesting that in patients with severe disease, early IV fluid resuscitation is unlikely to substantially alter the patient's clinical course. This

References (19)

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Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.

Funding Dr Gardner is supported in part by NIH grant 1K23DK088832-01.

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