What happens in severe acute pancreatitis?
Severe pancreatitis causes the death of parts of the pancreas. The injured and dying pancreas releases digestive enzymes into the abdomen, which causes extensive death of fatty tissue in the abdomen. As a consequence patients with severe pancreatitis have dead pancreatic tissue and also widespread death of fatty tissue around the pancreas. This dead pancreatic tissue is the source of the all problems in patients with severe pancreatitis. Toxins released from it cause the different organs to fail, while infection of the dead material cause most of the deaths from acute pancreatitis. Patients with severe pancreatitis go through well defined stages in their illness that require specific care. Our treatment protocols are directed towards anticipating the problems as they arise and providing appropriate level of care based on our understanding of the disease. In the first week failure of multiple organs develop due damage from toxins that are released into the blood stream from the dead pan
