Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 16, 2021; 9(35): 10927-10936
Published online Dec 16, 2021. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v9.i35.10927
Surgery for chronic pancreatitis in Finland is rare but seems to produce good long-term results
Mikael Parhiala, Juhani Sand, Johanna Laukkarinen
Mikael Parhiala, Johanna Laukkarinen, Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere 33521, Finland
Juhani Sand, Johanna Laukkarinen, Department of Gastroenterology and Alimentary Tract Surgery, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere 33520, Finland
Author contributions: Sand J and Laukkarinen J designed the study; Parhiala M contributed to the permits process, data collection and analysis; all authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.
Supported by Medical Research Fund of Pirkanmaa Hospital District, No. 9X024; and Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, No. MS424.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tampere University Hospital, Finland (ETL code R16153). The data from the HILMO register was provided by the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare with a license/permission (THL/1854/5.05.00/2012).
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. All co-authors have seen and agree with the contents of the manuscript and there is no financial interest to report. We certify that the submission is original work.
Data sharing statement: We are not give permission to share data because the data is being used to future studies and patient data is not allowed to be shared because of the EU Regulation on the protection of personal data.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Johanna Laukkarinen, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Alimentary Tract Surgery, Tampere University Hospital, Elämänaukio, Kuntokatu 2, Tampere 33520, Finland. johanna.laukkarinen@pshp.fi
Received: January 16, 2021
Peer-review started: January 16, 2021
First decision: May 4, 2021
Revised: May 19, 2021
Accepted: October 27, 2021
Article in press: October 27, 2021
Published online: December 16, 2021
Processing time: 327 Days and 20.4 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Chronic pancreatitis (CP) may need invasive surgical interventions. There is no current knowledge of long-term outcomes and prevalence of surgery for CP.

Research motivation

We wanted to investigate the current state of pancreatic surgery in Finland for CP.

Research objectives

Our objective was to find long-term outcomes of patients who have pancreatic surgery for CP pain in Finland.

Research methods

We gathered all CP patients who had pancreatic surgery in Finland in 2000-2008 via the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare registry. We gathered information about the time of CP diagnosis, etiology of CP, previous CP treatments, type of current surgical therapy, postoperative complications, possible reoperations, and exocrine and endocrine pancreatic insufficiency.

Research results

We found that surgery for CP is rare in Finland but most patients (70%) are pain free after surgery. Opiate usage was less after surgery.

Research conclusions

CP surgery is rare and produces good long-term results in CP patients.

Research perspectives

Our study was limited because of the small number of patients but we provide a long 16-year follow-up and our study contains all of CP patients in Finland who had pancreatic surgery.