Acute biliary pancreatitis treated by early endoscopic intervention.

AIM: Acute biliary pancreatitis (ABP) is a worldwide disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical efficacy of early endoscopic treatment of ABP. METHODS: From 2004 to 2010, 120 inpatients (42 male, 78 female) with ABP were randomly divided into two groups, each of which contains 60 patients. Before the intervention, patients in the two groups did not show significant differences in the age, gender, APACHE-II score, CT grading and other clinical characteristics. The early intervention group was managed with endoscopic treatment within 72 h after the initial symptom, whereas no endoscopic treatment for the control group. The mortality, complication rate, hospital stay, and the costs were compared. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the complication rate (10% vs. 26.7%, experiment group vs. control group, the same hereinafter) and the time of pain relief (2.36±1.91 d vs. 6.52±2.39 d), time of bellyache disappeared (5.95±1.81 d vs. 7.66±3.01 d), time of temperature recovery (3.74±2.06 d vs. 5.33±2.15 d), and hospital stay (18.3±4.1 d vs. 27.1±14.6 d) of the experiment group were all shortened (P<0.05). However, the mortality (1.7% vs. 10%, P>0.1), time of serum amylase recovery (3.98±2.02 d vs. 5.11±2.22 d, P>0.1), and hospital costs (P>0.1) did not show significant difference. Early endoscopic treatment can reduce the complication of ABP and shorten the hospital stay. It could be adopted as the preferred treatment for ABP in hospitals.