Could something besides gallstones cause panreatitus?

[cwitt]

On Sat March 2, I woke up with a stomach ache (The night before I had indulged in a sausage hot link). By noon on Sat, I had chills and an unbleievable pain in my upper right abdomen (I thought I had the flu). Could not eat and everytime I did, the pain would get worse. On Mon Dr thought it was flu. Finally Tuesday at 4pm I had Untrasound of Gallbladder-nothing showed up.  By 7 pm I was at emergency room- could not take pain any more.  They put me on IV for dehydration & gave me pain killers.  They ran blood tests-my amylase was 2100 & my Lypase was elevated (Pancreatitus (pancreatitis)).  All other blood work was good. By Wed eve I was feeling better and needed no pain killers. Thurs they did CT scan & Hyda scan (which the dye made me sick)& Ultrasound.  They showed nothing but Ultrasound showed slight inflamation (inflammation) in the Gallbladder & Pancreas. The Dr assumes this was due to a Gall Stone I may have passed & wants me to have an ERCP after things settle down.  He also said, if you get one stone, you will get more so I should consider removing Gallbladder.  All of this scares the heck out of me.  I am a 33 yr old female, 5'8" & 135 lbs, in good shape & active.  My diet is good, I did indulge once in a while but have always ate well.  I wonder if the sausage I ate the night before triggered all this.  I was released on Friday but still have this bloated feeling in my upper abdomen when I eat but am feeling better other than that. Amylace level has dropped. They want to do ERCP to see if a stone is blocking bile duct? I am scared to do ERCP, any other ideas on what this could be?  Thank you.

[Baseball_Mom]

I don't want to scare you but the ERCP is one of the only ways to diagnois if you have a stone trapped somewhere. After having my gallbladder removed in April 2001 I had to have an ERCP in November because I continued to have pains.  Having the ERCP done caused me to get Pancreatitis and I spent 3 days in the hospital and 4 weeks out of work.  Ask your doctor if there is any other procedure that can done.  Maybe he can do an MRCP which is a MRI of your biliary track.  Otherwise, the likelihood of you getting Pancreatitis again is certainly increased.  Once you have had a pancreatitic attack you are more susceptable to them.  I wish you the best of luck!

[Wools]

In Oct of 2000 our 23 year old son had symptons of liver disease. The local doctor wanted to do an ERCP to determine where the blockage was.
That ERCP gave him a severe case of pancreatitus (pancreatitis). He was put on a respirator and was in ICU for 63 days.  We were later told that an ERCP done poorly can cause many problems.  After going through that I would advise anyone who needs this test to go to a large hospital with a good reputation.  A hospital that does hundreds a month not just a few. The lack of experience of our local doctor nealy cost us our son's life.  After recovering from the pancreatitus (pancreatitis) they were able to diagnosis the blockage in his liver. It was a disease called PSC. He received a new liver 6 months later and is doing wonderful.

[....5,6,7,8]

To Wools,

Thanks for sharing your experience.  I'm glad that your son is doing well.  

I hear that the risk with ERCP is great.  I am well aware of the high number of SERIOUS complications following ERCP.  I believe the risk of a serious, life threatening complication, that could result in death, (like your son had) is 1%.  One percent!!!  That is 1 out of every 100 relatively healthy young people.(It is safer in the elderly) That is phenominal!  Preposterous!

Who is regulating these unskilled, non-specialists?  Why are we allowing them to do this to us???