Objective: To examine long-term survival and causes of death among working-age patients with acute pancreatitis (AP) compared with the normal population.
Summary of background data: Few studies have investigated long-term survival after AP and recurrent AP compared with the normal population; moreover, results from those studies are difficult to compare, due to suboptimal control populations and wide variations in follow-up times.
Methods: This retrospective, registry-based study included 1644 patients with AP, aged 18 to 64 years, admitted to Oulu University Hospital in 1995 to 2012. Patient data were compared with data from 8220 age- and sex-matched controls that resided in the hospital district area.
Results: Alcohol was the main etiologic factor causing 71.4% of the cases. During the median follow-up time of 9.5 years, mortality was 24.2% in the study group and 6.3% in the control group (P < 0.001). Alcohol-related factors caused 39.4% of deaths and alcohol AP was the main single cause of death (16.3%) in the study group. Of all fatal AP cases, 42.9% were related to recurrence. Survival was similar among patients with nonalcohol AP and controls.
Conclusion: The long-term mortality among patients admitted to the hospital due to (mainly alcohol induced) AP was 4 times higher than that in the age- and sex-matched control population. The significant difference in the causes of death between patients with alcohol AP and controls could be explained by alcohol-related diseases. Occurrences of AP without an alcohol etiology had a minimal impact on survival.