Acute Pancreatitis: Too Many Classifications—What Is a Clinician or Researcher To Do?

Classifying the severity of acute pancreatitis: Towards a way forward

“…With the less frequent use of routine CT scanning and fine needle aspiration for bacteriologic culture, alternative and accurate methods for the diagnosis of necrosis and infected necrosis are required. Contrary to the concerns raised by recent authors [6,13], infected necrosis can be diagnosed in the majority of patients on the basis of clinical signs and imaging [15]. Any clinical deterioration should prompt a septic screen to seek the locus of infection.…”

“…That the classifications differ is no surprise as different processes were used in their development: the foundation of the DBC was a meta-analysis of published studies while the RAC emerged through a web based iterative consultative process. And although the two classifications have been considered to have 'few differences' [6] there are some that are worth noting.…”

Frequency and prognosis of acute pancreatitis associated with acute hepatitis E: A systematic review

“…most widely accepted current set of criteria, more relevant to the day-to-day clinical care of patients, and simpler to classify patients into categories than with DBC[37]. Based on RAC, AP in our revue was severe in 18% of cases.…”

The Atlanta 2012 versus the Determinant-Based Classifications for Acute Pancreatitis: Which One is Better?

“…Nevertheless, our results suggest that there is room for a few possible improvements. Considering the Atlanta 2012 Classification, a better distinction between the Mild and the Moderate Severe categories should be done and, for DBC, the last two categories (Severe and Critical) are very similar so maybe they will be combined into a single group in the future [8]. The need for further improvement of these two classifications is also emphasized by other authors [7,16].…”