Incidence of Polycythaemia in Pancreatitis Patients

Acute pancreatitis is the inflammation of the pancreas due to reversible parenchymal injury. It is clinically diagnosed by a characteristic abdominal pain and laboratory findings of elevated levels of serum amylase and serum lipase. In addition to this, due to the movement of the intravascular fluid into the abdominal cavity, polycythaemia has been observed in a few such patients, which can potentially predispose to thromboembolic complications such as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE), thereby posing a life-threatening risk to the patient. A study was conducted in the Department of General Surgery at Saveetha Medical College and Hospital to assess the incidence of polycythaemia in patients clinically diagnosed with acute pancreatitis by retrospectively analysing the haematology reports of 50 patients. It was found that 5 out of 50 patients (10%) had a finding of polycythaemia in their haematology reports. The identification of polycythaemia in pancreatitis patients will help the clinician with the management protocol to prevent the occurrence of thromboembolic events.