Pancreatic conditions
What is NOT true about the pancreas.
Along with the thymus, the pancreas is known as a sweetbread in butchers and restaurants. The phrase was first used in 16th century but its origin is uncertain.
Which of the following hormones is not made by the pancreas.
Adrenaline is of course made by the adrenal glands (hence adrenal ine). Video is from "Wierd Al" Yankovich.
Which of the following is the most common cause of acute pancreatitis in Australia?
Gallstones is the most common followed by alcohol.
This person has suffered abdominal trauma. What does the CT show?
You can see the laceration of the pancreas body as a hypodense area vertically in the pancreas.
All of the following died at the age of 21yrs. Which one died of pancreatitis?
Stuart Sutcliffe died of a cerebral haemorrhage, Sid Vicious of a drug overdose and Billy the Kid unsurprisingly was shot.
What of the following is NOT true about pancreatic pseudocysts?
Rupture of a pseudocyst usually means emergent surgery.
One of the following statements is untrue about pancreatic cancer. Which one?
Depressingly the overall 5 yr survival rate is only 5 to 10%. Immunotherapy offers hope of an improvement into the future.
Ranson’s criteria are used to assess the severity of acute pancreatitis. Which 5 parameters are used?
The parameters on admission for gallstone and non gallstone pancreatitis are the same but the cut offs are different. A further group of parameters are then used after 48hrs of hospital admission, 6 for alcoholic pancreatitis, 5 for gallstone pancreatitis. Each parameter gets a score, the higher the score the worse predicted outcome.
Another score you might see is the APACHE-2 score which can be done at any time.
“Courvoisier’s Law” is when you have jaundice and an enlarged but non painful gallbladder. What does it imply as the cause?
Ludwig Courvoisier was a Swiss surgeon (died in 1918). He was one of the first surgeons to remove gallstones from the common bile duct.
It is also the name of a French cognac.
Which of these celebrities did NOT die of adenocarcinoma of the pancreas?
Steve Jobs had an Islet cell tumour of the pancreas., not the much more common adenocarcinoma. His tumour was potentially curable. Unwisely he sought alternative therapies --- unsuccessfully.