Groove Pancreatitis: Report of Three Cases with Brief Review of Literature

Groove pancreatitis (GP) is a rare type of segmental pancreatitis, and it remains largely an unfamiliar entity to most physicians. It is often misdiagnosed as pancreatic cancer and autoimmune pancreatitis. With better understanding of radiological findings, preoperative differentiation is often possible. If there is preoperative diagnosis of GP, one can employ non-surgical treatment. But most of the patients ultimately require surgery. Pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is the surgical treatment of choice. We report three cases of GP that were treated by Whipple’s operation at our unit. All the three patients had a history of long-standing alcohol intake. In the first and third patients, we had a preoperative diagnosis of GP. But, in the second patient, our pre-operative and intra-operative diagnosis was a pancreatic head malignancy. Diagnosis of GP was made only after histopathological examination. All the three patients had uneventful postoperative recovery and were well at 55-, 45- and 24-month follow-up respectively. In addition to detail descriptions of our three cases, a detailed review of the current literature surrounding this clinical entity is also provided in this article.