Correlation of disease severity and pleural effusion in patients with acute pancreatitis

Objective To investigate the correlation between disease severity and pleural effu sion in patients with acute pancreatitis(AP).Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on a prospectively collected database.The demographic,clinical,and laboratory data of 246 consecutive cases of AP in patients admitted to the Affiliated Union Hospital of Fujian Medical University between January 2008 to December 2012 were reviewed.Acute physiology and chronic health evaluation Ⅱ (APACHE Ⅱ) score and computed tomography severity index (CTSI) were used to evaluate the disease severity of AP.The relationship between the severity and pleural effusion was analyzed.Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was used to compare the values of APACHE Ⅱ score and CTSI in predicting the prognosis of patients with pleural effusion.Results Among the 246 patients,there were 184 patients with pleural effusion and 62 patients without pleural effusion.The incidence of pleu ral effusion in AP was 74.8％.Further study showed that the difference in the incidences of pleural effusion between the severe group and the mild group was significant (P＜0.01).There was a trend that the more serious the patient's condition,the more the pleural effusion.Moreover,the levels of pleural effusion were significantly and positively correlated with the APACHE Ⅱ score (r=0.775,P＜0.01) and CTSI (r=0.525,P＜0.05).Logistic regression analysis showed that the factors significantly associated with pleural effusion formation were a high APACHE Ⅱ score and a high CTSI.Areas under the ROC curve of the APACHE Ⅱ score,CTSI and combined assessment were 0.798,0.687 and 0.812 for predicting mortality of the patients with pleural effusion.Through comparison of the areas under the ROC curve,there was a significant difference between the APACHE Ⅱ score and CTSI as well as combined assessment and CTSI (P＜0.05).Conclusions The disease severity was closely related to pleural effusion in patients with AP.Combining the two scoring systems to evaluate the disease severity and providing active treatment were important to improve the prognosis of patients with pleural effusion. Key words: Pancreatitis, acute necrotizing;  Pleural effusion;  Injury severity score