title: The clinical outcome of elderly patients with acute pancreatitis is not different in spite of the different etiologies and severity.
abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the overall clinical characteristics of elderly patients with acute pancreatitis. We retrospectively evaluated 227 consecutively enrolled patients who were admitted with acute pancreatitis. The clinical features, the radiological and laboratory data and the clinical outcome were analyzed according to the age groups (≥ 65 years vs. <65 years). Among the 227 enrolled patients with acute pancreatitis, there were 85 elderly patients and 142 non-elderly. The mean age of the elderly patients was 72.3 ± 5.5 years and that of the non-elderly was 44.7 ± 11.7 (p<0.001). For the elderly patients, biliary pancreatitis was the most common cause (56.5%), but alcoholic pancreatitis was most common in the non-elderly patients (45.8%). Although the computed tomography (CT) severity index was significantly higher for the non-elderly patients (p<0.001), the acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE II) score was significantly higher for the elderly than that for the non-elderly (p<0.001). However, the duration of the hospital stay (10.3 ± 9.6 days vs. 11.9 ± 10.1 days, p=0.619) and mortality (3.5% vs. 0.7%, p=0.148) were not different between the age-groups. In our study, chronological age had no significant influence on the clinical outcome in spite of the different etiologies and severity of acute pancreatitis.
authors.affiliation: Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul Medical Center, 171-1 Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-090, South Korea.
authors.forename: Jang Eon
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jin-Hyeok
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Sang Hyub
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Byung Hyo
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Cha
authors.forename: Young Soo
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Jin-Wook
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Sook-Hyang
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Jeong
authors.forename: Nayoung
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Dong Ho
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010195:Pancreatitis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index