Every time that I have ended up in the hospital with an acute flare up of Pancreatitis Pain among the first things that the Doctor wants to do – after he pokes and prods my pancreas – is to order some type of imaging.
I’ve always wondered what this image was that they were looking for and how it was going to help in my treatment.
Discussing my Chronic Pancreatitis was even more of a pain when I tried to describe the constant and sometimes elusive pattern of pain.
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New Study
Now a new study comes out that studies the “relationship between structural abnormalities identified by abdominal imaging and patient-reported pain.”
More than 518 people were included in this study that took place between 2008 and 2012 and focused on Chronic Pancreatitis and how well imaging was at determining the pain level that the patient was feeling.
It was no surprise, to me at least, that it ended up proving something that anyone who has suffered from Chronic Pancreatitis already knows – imaging may give the Doctors a pretty picture but it doesn’t tell them how much pain I am in.
The Pancreatitis Pain Study Results
According to C.Mel Wilcox, MD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in an interview with Healio Gastroenterology:
“You really can’t predict what kind of pain someone has with chronic pancreatitis based upon the CT scan, This is important when we manage patients with chronic pancreatitis and pain, [and] we need much more research into the mechanisms of pain in chronic pancreatitis.”
Facts From The Study
There were some interesting things other than the stated purpose that came out of this study.
Anyone who has had to deal with Pancreatitis knows that the first thing that the Doctor always asks is whether or not we drink alcohol.
Suggesting that this is the reason that we are suffering and insinuating that we brought this on ourselves.
But of the 518 people studied, less than 45.8% of them were diagnosed by the Doctors as being alcohol related! Another 24.3% were idiopathic or unknown reasons, 9.5% were genetic, 7% were obstructive, and all other reasons were 13.5%.
Sure, a lot of the cases were related to alcohol. When I see a new Doctor they always seem to quote between 70 and 90% of Pancreatitis flare ups were alcohol related.
But there is also another study recently out that determined a gene abnormality could make certain people more susceptible to Pancreatitis through alcohol and/or smoking than any others.
Final Thoughts On Pancreatitis Pain
If anything I think that this study shows the importance of being a knowledgeable and pro-active patient.
Doctors, when they see us, are going to come with the prejudices that they have.
The best thing that we can do is to make sure that we know about our condition in general and how it relates to our own case in particular.
The more information that we have the better prepared we are when we see a Doctor.
This is so true! It works 2 ways. You could be in more or less pain. The doctors were shocked my first time in the hospital at how good I looked compared to my awful CT scan. They said they had thought they would operate but couldn’t because I looked good. No way could they do surgery in good conciense. I was grateful they weren’t “cutting happy”. Especially now that I am a better informed patient thank God!