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Blood and urine samples of 37 patients hospitalized with a proved diagnosis of acute pancreatitis are reviewed. Value of serum glutamic transaminase activity is the best discriminator between biliary and non biliary pancreatitis (p less than 0.0025). Hypercoagulability is very often observed but there is no correlation between the importance of this abnormality and the severity of the disease. No single specific marker of the prognostic is identified.

Plasma concentrations and urinary excretion of para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) were measured over a 6-hour period after administration of N-benzoil L-tyrosyl aminobenzoic acid (NBT-PABA) to 15 patients with chronic pancreatitis and 15 controls. The sum of plasma PABA concentrations at 1 hour and 2 hours was calculated for each subject. The resulting value proved to have a specificity of 100% and a sensitivity of 80%, as opposed to 86% and 67% respectively for urinary concentrations.

The authors have studied several seric, plasmatic and urinary constituents in patients hospitalized for an acute abdominal syndrome to be able to characterize an eventual pancreatic lesion; mainly seric and urinary amylase as well as its isoenzymes, lipase, liver profile and trypsin. In acute pancreatitis, the means of the maximal increases of seric amylase, lipase and trypsin are respectively: 10.7; 21.6 and 19.2 X N (upper normal limit) whereas in chronic pancreatitis, these elevations are 6.5 X N for amylase and 9.5 XN for lipase. The authors observed at J1 (first day of hospitalisation) and at J2 an increase in seric amylase, lipase and/or liver profile respectively in 95, 90 and 25 p. cent of acute pancreatitis; in 86, 86 and 14 p. cent of chronic pancreatitis and 43, 39 and 86 p. cent of bili duct diseases. In conclusion, it appears compulsory to run a liver profile with the pancreatic enzymes (amylase and lipase) to diagnose a pancreatitis in presence of an acute abdominal syndrome.