Publication:

A study on the prognostic value of the strong ion gap in acute pancreatitis

Background Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) may range up to 20-30%. So, it is important to assess the disease severity in a timely and accurate manner to provide comprehensive treatment to Acute pancreatitis (AP) patients, which will allow the clinician to consider more aggressive interventions to prevent adverse outcomes and decrease the high mortality of SAP.

Methods This is a prospective cohort study of   61 patients admitted to the KIMS, Hubli from December 2016 to June 2018 with Acute pancreatitis (AP).  Blood gas and biochemical analysis for each patient was performed on admission and multiple metrics was calculated according to the Stewart’s acid-base theory and their accuracy was used as predictors of AP severity and mortality. A p value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results Of the 61 patients presenting with AP, 6 developed severe AP and 5 died during hospitalization. Patients with severe AP had significantly higher median strong ion gap (SIG) than patients with mild or moderate AP respectively with p<0.001 making SIG strong predictor of severity, mortality and good prognostic indicator.

Conclusions SIG is a strong independent predictor of severity and mortality. It helps in better triaging, risk stratification, management and prognosis of such patients in the future.