PROSPECTIVE EVALUATION OF PANC 3 SCORE IN PREDICTING SEVERITY OF ACUTE PANCREATITIS

Background: About 15-20% of cases of acute pancreatitis progress to a severe form, leading to high mortality rates. Thus early prediction of severity is utmost important so as to provide better management and decrease mortality.

Objective: To explore the efficiency of PANC 3 SCORE in predicting the severity in patients with acute pancreatitis on admission and its relation to clinical outcome.

Methods: Patients with Acute pancreatitis were assessed to sex, age, body mass index (BMI), etiology of pancreatitis, Hematocrit and presence or absence of pleural effusion at the time of admission intensive care need, length of hospital stay, length of stay in intensive care unit and mortality. The PANC 3 score was determined on admission and compared to acute pancreatitis grade of the Revised Atlanta classification.

Results: Out of 46 patients diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, 46 patients met the inclusion criteria. The PANC 3 score was positive in 4 cases (8.69%), pancreatitis progressed to a severe form in 7 cases (15.2%) and 3 patients (6.5%) died. Patients with a positive score and severe pancreatitis required intensive care more often, and stayed for a longer period in intensive care units. The PANC 3 score showed sensitivity of 42.85%, specificity of 97.45%, accuracy of 90.17%, positive predictive value of 75% and negative predictive value of 89.13% in prediction of severe acute pancreatitis.

Conclusion: The PANC 3 score has high specificity, high accuracy and high predictive value in prediction of severe acute pancreatitis. It has only 3 parameters which can be easily done in any healthcare system. It does not need much expertise to analyze PANC3 at the time of admission which adds the advantage of this score over other scoring systems.