SAP is a serious type of acute pancreastitis (AP), with a serious pathological condition, always combined with pancreas necrosis and complicatins of toxic shock, with a mortality of 25% - 40% according to recent reviews. Patients with SAP tend to cause IAP elevation, and abrupt elevation of IAP eventually causes IAH. IAH causes organ dysfunction such as respiratory failure, circulatory failure, and renal failure, which are referred to ACS. About 11% of SAP patients suffer from the complication of ACS. SAP patients complicated with ACS tend to be overwhelming and the mortality reaches 66.7%. There are certain guidelines for treatment of SAP, but until now, there have been no standard treatments for ACS in SAP.
A research article to be published on 14 June 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team led by Dr. Zhang Min Jie from Affiliated central Hospital of Huzhou normal college administer Chinese traditional medicine Dachengqi Decoction and Glauber's salt combined with Routine non-operative conservative treatments, including continuous peripancreatic vascular pharmic infusion for treatment and predicting patient's conditions of ACS in SAP. Through comparision with the control group to demonstrate whether the TCM-wmtherapy is effective for treatment of ACS in SAP.
Through comparision with control group, we found that the ICP data in study group were lower than those in control group (P<0.05). APACHE Ⅱscores in study group were significantly less than which in control group (P<0.05), The ICP level and the cumulative scores of APACHE Ⅱin study group decreased earlier than which in control group (P<0.05). The relief time of abdominalgia and burbulence in study group were shorter than which in control group (P<0.05). The ascites quantity on 7th treatment day and the cysts formation rate in study group were less than which in control group (P<0.05). Hospitalization time in study group was shorter than which in control group (P<0.05). The mortality rate of study group was lower than which of control group, but have no significant difference (P>0.05). These results suggest that administering this therapeutic protocol can treating IAH through lower IAP, relaxing suffering symptom of ACS, slow down the pathological condition exacerbation, and accelerating the recovery of illness, So could prevent and treat ACS in SAP efficiently and therefore have great potential to be a new way for the treatment of ACS in SAP.
The results of this study describe a beneficial effect of Chinese traditional medicine on the relief of symptoms strength and duration, ascites retention, shortening of hospitalization period, and inhibiting cyst formation in SAP. Although the medication did not significantly improve the prognosis of the patients, the data are encouraging and provide a potentially important new clue for the treatment of ACS in SAP.