State of Art

In 1904 Professor Mayo Robson [18] gave a number of lectures in London entitled “The Pathology and Surgery of Diseases of the Pancreas”. He described ten cases of chronic pancreatitis identified by obstructive jaundice and abdominal pain. The diagnosis was in all cases verified at surgery. He cited a textbook from 1799: Matthew Baillie: “Morbid Anatomy of the Pancreas”, to be the first publication with a description of the disease chronic pancreatitis. The first detailed and comprehensive clinical description was published in Gastroenterology 1946 [3] including data from 29 cases of chronic relapsing pancreatitis. This publication was the starting signal for an intense and increasing scientific interest in chronic pancreatitis, experimentally and clinically.