Relationship Between Laboratory Parameters and Balthazar Severity Score in Acute Pancreatitis

INTRODUCTION: Several criteria have been established to assess the severity and prognosis of the disease in patients diagnosed with acute Pancreatitis(AP)in addition to the scoring and classifications developed for this purpose.Our study aims to assess the correlation between the clinical picture and laboratory parameters of patients diagnosed with AP in the emergency department, with a focus on using the Balthazar Severity Scoring to identify the severe cases at an earlier stage.
METHODS: 250patients over the age of 18 who were admitted to the emergency room due to abdominal pain and were later diagnosed with acute pancreatitis were included in this retrospective study.
RESULTS: According to the Balthazar Severity Score calculated,194 patients were classified as mild,while56 as moderate. While there was no significant difference in terms of immature granulocytes percentage between the two groups, LDH and Lipase/Amilase ratio yielded a statistically significant result(P=0.001 and 0.001, respectively).The findings with regard to CRP can be considered borderline significant(P=0.051).Sensitivity was46.4%,specificity was 85%, PPV was47.2%and NPV was 84.6%when the NLR cutoff was14.90.At a lipase/amylase ratio threshold of 2.27,the corresponding NPV was 86.7%, PPV was26.3%,specificity was 57.2%and sensitivity 69.6%.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Unlike previous studies towards diagnosing severe cases of AP at an early stage, our study found that the percentage of immature granulocyte(IG%)parameter did not show any statistically significant results.The lipase/amylase ratio stands out as a potential distinctive parameter for distinguishing severe cases.Furthermore, while diagnosing severe cases, there were statistically significant differences observed across the groups in relation to WBC,neutrophil,lymphocyte,NLR,PLR,andLDH ratio