Pulmonary Thromboembolism Complicating Acute Pancreatitis With Pancreatic Ascites: A Series of 4 cases

Acute pancreatitis is an inflammatory disease often associated with local and systemic complications. Portosplenic and splanchnic vascular complications of acute pancreatitis are common, but extrasplanchnic vessel thrombosis is less commonly seen. Among them, pulmonary thromboembolism is a very rare complication to be encountered with. We report four cases of acute pulmonary thromboembolism in patients with acute pancreatitis superimposed on chronic pancreatitis. All the patients had abdominal pain on presentation and distention of abdomen during the course. Dyspnea was present in all the patients. All patients were found to have pancreatic ascites, whose association with pulmonary thromboembolism is reported only in two patients till date upto our knowledge. Two of them had deep vein thrombosis and rest two had no venous thrombosis. All of them were managed conservatively using subcutaneous heparin, intravenous fluids and analgesics. We provide the causative mechanism for occurrence of pulmonary thromboembolism in acute on chronic pancreatitis. We have also hypothesized pancreatic ascites as the possible cause for pulmonary thromboembolism and provide explanation for it. We conclude that pulmonary thromboembolism in acute pancreatitis has good prognosis if diagnosed timely. Whenever patient with pancreatic ascites presents with dyspnea, pulmonary thromboembolism must be ruled out. Received October 23rd, 2015-Accepted January 07th, 2016