title: Scoring of human acute pancreatitis: state of the art.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Acute pancreatitis remains as one of the most difficult and challenging digestive disorder to predict in terms of clinical course and outcome. Every case has an individual course and therefore acute pancreatitis remains challenging and fascinating. Due to this variability, many different scoring systems have evolved during the last decades. Every scoring system has advantages and disadvantages. Not every scoring system is capable of assessing the clinical time course of the disease, some are only suitable for the time of initial presentation.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper will give an overview on the development of different widely used scoring systems and their performance in assessing severity and prognosis of acute pancreatitis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Severity assessment means objective quantification of overall severity of illness. Early and reliable stratification of severity is required to decide best treatment of the individual patient, preparation for possible evolving complications or for referral to specialist centers. No single scoring system is able to cover the entire range of problems associated with treatment and assessment of acute pancreatitis. In our clinical experience, we recommend hematocrit upon admission, daily sequential organ failure assessment score and procalcitonin, C-reactive protein on day 3 and CT severity index beyond the first week. These scoring tools together with close clinical follow-up of the patient ultimately lead to an optimized treatment of this challenging disease.
authors.affiliation: Dept of General, Thoracic, Vascular and Transplantation Surgery, University of Rostock, Schillingallee 35, 18057 Rostock, Germany. guido.alsfasser@med.uni-rostock.de
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Alsfasser
authors.forename: Bettina M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Rau
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Klar
mesh_terms: D018806:APACHE; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D002097:C-Reactive Protein / Q000032:analysis* / Q000378:metabolism; D002116:Calcitonin / Q000097:blood*; D015740:Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006400:Hematocrit; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000379:methods; D063305:Organ Dysfunction Scores; D019283:Pancreatitis, Acute Necrotizing / Q000097:blood* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology; D011379:Prognosis; D011498:Protein Precursors / Q000097:blood*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013997:Time Factors; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; C000606589:CALCA protein, human; D011498:Protein Precursors; D002116:Calcitonin; D002097:C-Reactive Protein; D015740:Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide