Synchronous organ failure and infected pancreatic necrosis define genuine critical acute pancreatitis

Abstract Background Critical acute pancreatitis (CAP) was supposed to be strongly associated with the highest risk of adverse outcomes. However, the definition of CAP needs to be further clarified. Methods A prospective database with consecutive patients of infected pancreatic necrosis (IPN) at a tertiary hospital was post-hoc analyzed. Patients were assigned to IPN alone, Metachronous-CAP (MCAP) and Synchronous-CAP group (SCAP) according to presence or absence of organ failure (OF) and the crosstalk between OF and IPN. Clinical interventions and outcomes were compared among groups. Results A total of 248 IPN patients were enrolled and the overall mortality was 25.8%. Compared with MCAP, SCAP was associated with higher mortality (66.2 versus 10.0%) and morbidity (41.2 versus 18.0%), longer duration of OF (median 35.5 versus 12.0 days), ICU length of stay (LOS) (median 28.0 versus 16.0 days) and hospital LOS (median 67.0 versus 60.0 days) (all P  Conclusions SCAP, characterized with synchronous persistent OF and IPN, was associated with higher mortality and morbidity and should be defined as genuine CAP.