Chronic Pancreatitis patients at higher risk of MI, finds study
Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a serious disorder which can have a severe impact on the quality of life in addition to life-threatening long-term sequelae. A recent study published in the journal Pancreas suggests that patients with chronic pancreatitis and associated comorbidities are at high risk of developing Myocardial Infarction.
The worldwide increase in the prevalence of CP is attributable to the increase in alcohol consumption and the increased availability of high-quality diagnostic modalities. Patients with CP may experience unremitting abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea, maldigestion, glucose intolerance, and weight loss, all of which substantially impair their quality of life. Moreover, CP requires repeated medical interventions and hospitalization and increases the burden on medical resources. While understanding this illness is improving, there are a number of aspects where knowledge is lacking. In particular, data on the prevalence of CP and MI are scant. Therefore, researchers of the Staten Island University Hospital, New York conducted a study to ascertain whether chronic inflammation secondary to chronic pancreatitis (CP) has any association with myocardial infarction(MI).
They conducted a prevalence study on 28,842,210 patients and collected data from a commercial database (Explorys, Inc, IBM Watson, Ohio). They enrolled adults with the diagnosis of "chronic pancreatitis," based on Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine–Clinical Terms, in the CP group, and the rest of the patients in the non-CP group. They used statistical multivariate model and compared prevalence of MI in both the group.
Key findings of the study were:
♦ Upon analysis they found, the overall prevalence of MI was 14.22% in the CP group and 3.23% in the non-CP group.
♦ In the multivariate analysis, they noted the odds ratio (OR) for MI in the CP group was 1.453.
♦ They also found that hypertension was a strong predictor for MI in the CP group with an OR of 3.2, followed by chronic kidney disease, older than 65 years, dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, obesity, alcohol abuse, smoking, White race, and male sex.
The authors concluded, "This study showed that CP is associated with comorbidities, which can increase the prevalence and OR of MI".
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