Your pancreas is one of many glands in your body that keep you healthy and your digestive system functioning properly. But sometimes, pancreatitis can disrupt the natural processes of your pancreas, likely requiring treatment.
Acute pancreatitis can occur at any age. The good news is that, with treatment, it usually goes away within a few days. However, if not properly treated, it can result in recurring or chronic pancreatitis, which can become difficult to treat, as well as other life-threatening conditions.
Here, we’ll cover pancreatitis and what symptoms can feel like. We’ll also go over how pancreatitis is diagnosed, and what your treatment options are so you can get your pancreas functioning as it should.
What pancreatitis is and how it develops
The pancreas is responsible for making enzymes that help break down food in your body. It also makes hormones, such as insulin, which are released into your blood stream to control your blood sugar levels.
When working properly, your pancreas produces digestive enzymes that flow from the pancreas to the intestines to aid in digestion. But with pancreatitis, digestive enzymes can leak into the pancreas, causing irritation and inflammation.
Inflammation can either be acute – where it comes on quickly and goes away after a short time – or chronic, where symptoms occur over prolonged periods of time. With chronic pancreatitis, symptoms tend to get worse and can lead to more serious health conditions.
There’s also an uncommon condition called autoimmune pancreatitis, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the pancreas. As is the case with many other autoimmune conditions, doctors aren’t sure why this occurs.
Where is the pancreas located?
Your pancreas is a tadpole-shaped gland that sits between your stomach and your spine, near the first part of your small intestine. When your pancreas is functioning normally, you shouldn’t be able to feel it. But with pancreatitis, you experience abdominal pain where the pancreas is located that can radiate into your back.
Symptoms of pancreatitis vary depending on the type of pancreatitis you experience
There are three types of pancreatitis: acute, chronic and autoimmune. Acute and chronic are the most common forms, and while symptoms are similar among the types, they’re typically caused by different things.
Common acute pancreatitis symptoms you may experience
The most common symptom of acute pancreatitis is pain in the upper stomach that can begin quickly or come on slowly and spread to the back. Pain can be mild or severe, and last for several days. Other common symptoms of acute pancreatitis may include:
- Fever
- Nausea
- Rapid heart rate
- Swollen abdomen that may be tender to the touch
Chronic pancreatitis symptoms can be severe
Chronic pancreatitis usually causes the same symptoms as acute pancreatitis. However, it may cause additional, more severe symptoms based on the breakdown of pancreatic function. These can include:
- Indigestion and pain after eating
- Loss of appetite
- Poops that are fatty and leave an oily film in the toilet
- Sudden, unintended weight loss
Symptoms of autoimmune pancreatitis
It can be difficult to diagnose the two types of autoimmune pancreatitis because it’s so rare, and one form of it can look like pancreatic cancer. Type 1 is most common and can cause inflammation and swelling not only in the pancreas, but also problems in the kidney, liver, lungs, and other organs. Type 2 autoimmune pancreatitis only affects the pancreas, but can be associated with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Common symptoms include:
- Pain in the upper abdomen and lower back
- Diarrhea
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Unintended weight loss
Pancreatitis can happen to anyone. Heavy alcohol use and gallstones make up around 80% of pancreatitis cases, and the rest is typically caused by certain types of medication, viral infections, trauma or surgery of the pancreas.
Gallstones can cause acute pancreatitis
In order to digest food, your body produces bile, a digestive enzyme, and stores it in your gallbladder. When bile builds up and hardens, it can form gallstones. These gallstones can block the bile duct, causing inflammation and other symptoms of pancreatitis.
Because high levels of estrogen can slow down gallbladder function, gallstones, and complications from gallstones like pancreatitis, more frequently occur in women and pregnant women.
Gallstones are common, and they don’t always cause complications. But when they cause you to experience symptoms of pancreatitis, it’s important to get treatment as soon as possible – before symptoms can become worse and complications can occur.
Alcohol-related pancreatitis is caused by heavy alcohol use
Alcohol-related pancreatitis is associated with heavy drinking, usually over a long period of time. Doctors aren’t sure why it happens to some people who are long-term alcohol users and not others.
It rarely occurs from binge drinking, but binge drinking is occasionally associated with acute pancreatitis, where recurrent acute attacks of pancreatitis can become chronic.
Possible risk factors for autoimmune pancreatitis
With an autoimmune disorder, the body’s immune system becomes overactive, causing it to attack healthy organs and tissue. If you have autoimmune pancreatitis, your body’s immune system attacks your pancreas for many reasons, including:
- Having an autoimmune disorder, such as lupus, inflammatory bowel disease or rheumatoid arthritis
- Certain viruses and bacterial infections
- Certain medications
- Low thyroid levels (also known as hypothyroidism, commonly caused by Hashimoto’s thyroiditis)
Because autoimmune pancreatitis symptoms can look like pancreatic cancer symptoms, it’s important to get an accurate diagnosis so you can seek the proper treatment.
How pancreatitis is diagnosed
The pancreas is located deep in your belly, so diagnosing problems related to your pancreas can be challenging, especially through a physical exam. So if you’re experiencing symptoms of any form of pancreatitis, your doctor will first check your pancreatic function in several ways:
- Imaging tests – This includes ultrasound, which can create a picture of your pancreas, as well as find gallstones; a computed tomography (CT) scan to create pictures of your pancreas, gallbladder and bile ducts; and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which looks at your organs to determine possible causes of pancreatitis.
- Blood tests – These test your levels of digestive enzymes, blood sugar and lipids (fat), as well as for signs of inflammation in your pancreas, gallbladder, liver and bile ducts.
Chronic pancreatitis requires additional diagnostic steps
If your doctor suspects you may have chronic pancreatitis, they may also order a fecal analysis in addition to imaging and blood tests. This determines if you have fat malabsorption, where the body isn’t able to pull nutrients from the food you eat. A fecal analysis can also help to determine if your pancreas is making enough digestive enzymes.
How to treat and prevent the different forms of pancreatitis
There’s no specific medicine to treat pancreatitis. However, acute pancreatitis can require gall bladder surgery and short-term treatment, and chronic pancreatitis usually requires more intense, ongoing and lifelong treatment.
How acute pancreatitis can be treated and prevented
If you’re diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, it usually requires a hospital stay to manage your initial symptoms. Your doctor will likely give you medicine to help with pain, intravenous (IV) fluids to keep you hydrated, and in cases of more severe symptoms like vomiting, a feeding tube to help with nutrition.
If the acute pancreatitis was due to gallstones, you will eventually need to have your gallbladder removed in a procedure called a cholecystectomy. Most of the time this is done during your hospital stay to treat acute pancreatitis. But if your acute pancreatitis is severe, this surgery may be delayed to allow your body to fully heal.
Most people’s symptoms improve within a week in the hospital, but it can take longer. After a hospital stay, you can manage and prevent acute pancreatis in several ways:
- Making lifestyle changes – This includes stopping smoking, safely reducing or completely cutting out alcohol use, and losing weight to manage or avoid conditions that can cause acute pancreatitis (like gallstones) or complicate it (like diabetes).
- Adjusting your diet – A diet low in fat and cholesterol, and high in nutrients, can help with symptoms, and is especially helpful if your pancreatitis was caused by gallstones. Increasing your water intake can help you stay hydrated. And eating small meals throughout the day can help by putting less stress on your digestive system.
- Gallstone procedures – If gallstones were the cause your pancreatitis, your doctor may recommend nonsurgical procedures to break up the gallstones, or remove gallstones from a blocked duct with something called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.
Ways that chronic pancreatitis can be treated and managed
Making lifestyle changes, like cutting back or completely stopping smoking and drinking alcohol, and adjusting your diet can help you manage chronic pancreatitis, but it may also require more intense treatment such as:
- Long-term condition management – You may need to manage your pain and symptoms for the rest of your life. Your doctor may prescribe pain medicines or pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy to help restore your digestive tract and its ability to properly digest food. You may also need medications to manage other conditions that can complicate symptoms.
- Pancreatic surgery – Your doctor may recommend surgery to remove part or all of your pancreas. While you can live without your pancreas and your gallbladder, you may need to make significant lifestyle changes and be on lifelong medications to effectively manage your condition.
Treatment for autoimmune pancreatitis
In a small number of cases, autoimmune pancreatitis will go away on its own. But most people diagnosed with autoimmune pancreatitis need treatment. This is usually a high dose of a corticosteroid to help reduce swelling and calm the immune system, so it stops attacking the pancreas. Unless you experience complications, no further treatment for autoimmune pancreatitis is usually needed.
If you experience pancreatitis symptoms, don’t ignore them
If you start to experience symptoms, no matter how severe, speak to your doctor so you can get diagnosed and begin treatment immediately. If you’re diagnosed with acute pancreatitis, you should start to feel better in about 5-10 days after you begin treatment. If you can avoid whatever may have caused acute pancreatitis, it likely won’t occur again.
And if you have been diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis, it’s important to stay on top of your symptoms and treatment, so you can slow progression of the disease and avoid complications. With your doctor’s support, you should be able to manage your symptoms and live a normal life.