A retrospective study of clinical efficacy of serum lipase/amylase ratio in predicting etiology of acute pancreatitis

Abstract

Background: The serum lipase/amylase (L/A) ratio had been proposed to distinguish the etiology of pancreatitis, the efficacy to predict the etiology of acute pancreatitis is assessed in our study as it may need different therapeutic approaches.Methods: From January 2017 to December 2017, 54 patients with acute pancreatitis were included 48 (88.9%) men and 6 (11.1%) women with a mean age of 39.2 years, ranging from 18 to 90 years. They were divided into 2 subgroups as alcohol (n=27), nonalcoholic (n=27), and their serum L/A ratio level were compared with a mean age 39.42±9.9 years in alcoholic group versus 39.04 ± 7.7 years in nonalcoholic group.Results: Male predominance in alcoholic and nonalcoholic group and all female patients (100%) etiology is nonalcoholic. The elevation of serum amylase level in nonalcoholic group on average is 600 versus in alcoholic group 512 and serum lipase level average in nonalcoholic group 766 versus in alcohol group 629. Instead, the serum L/A ratio showed no significant changes among each group. In this study, the alcoholic acute pancreatitis is more severe than nonalcoholic pancreatitis. There was also no statistically significant (p=0.90) difference in serum L/A ratio in alcoholic and nonalcoholic pancreatitis.Conclusions: The serum amylase and lipase concentrations are not able to establish etiology acute pancreatitis as assessed by imaging techniques. The L/A ratio is not a good predictive factor in distinguishing acute episode of alcoholic and non-alcoholic acute pancreatitis.