Acute Renal Failure Complicating Severe Acute Pancreatitis

Dear Sir The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of acute renal failure (ARF) in patients with severe acute pancreatitis (AP), and to evaluate the most important risk factors for ARF development and mortality. During a 5-year period, 563 patients were admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of AP. A retrospective analysis of the clinical, laboratory, and necroscopy data, including the occurrence of local and systemic complications, Ranson score during the first 48 h, presence and mode of renal replacement therapy in ARF patients, and outcome were recorded [1, 2], The statistical significance of differences between the group means was determined by Student’s t test for unpaired samples. The significance of difference between sample frequencies was determined by the χ statistic. The significance level was set at p < 0.05. Seventy-nine (14%) of the 563 patients with AP developed ARF during the course of the disease. There were 49 (62%) males and 30 (38%) females with ages ranging from 19 to 79 years (average 54.0 ± 15.2 years). Of the patient with ARF, only 3 (3.8%) had ARF alone. Other patients had additional failure of other organ systems, 52 (68.4%) of whom had multiorgan failure (MOF) before the onset of ARF. In only 7 (8.9%) patients with ARF was the renal system the first organ system to fail, 5 (7.14%) of whom had previously impaired renal function. Twelve (15.2%) of the ARF patients had systemic infection. In table 1 the characteristics observed in the patients with AP and ARF are presented and compared with the group of subjects without ARF.