The relationship between serum albumin and development of persistent organ failure in patients with acute pancreatitis

Abstract

Background and Aim: pancreatitis is defined as an inflammatory injury to the pancreas, which may be a localized injury to the pancreas or may develop into a systemic inflammatory syndrome associated with multiple organ failure and then death. The importance of this research comes from the possibility of using the serum albumin value to determine the prognosis of acute pancreatitis. And predicting the possibility of developing persistent organ failure, since serum albumin is an available and inexpensive laboratory analysis.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study at AL-Assad university hospital between January 2017 and December 2019.

The data of 86 patients diagnosed with acute pancreatitis were collected and albumin analysis was performed for all patients upon admission, Then the patients were divided into two groups based on the incidence of persistent organ failure, and the relationship between serum albumin and the occurrence of persistent organ failure was studied.

Results: The study included 86 patients distributed between 42 males (49%) and 44 females (51%), and the mean age was 45 years, 22 patients out of 86 had severe pancreatitis and persistent organ failure, while 64 patients had mild to moderate pancreatitis without the development of persistent organ failure, and to study the relationship of serum albumin to the occurrence of persistent organ failure, a t-test was conducted for two independent samples and it was found that there was a statistically significant difference where the p-value = 0.000, and the sensitivity of albumin in predicting the occurrence of persistent organ failure was % 73, and its specificity was 86%. At a cut-off value of 3.3 mg/L albumin, and the positive predictive value was 64%, and the negative predictive value was 90%, at the same cut-off value.

Conclusion: Albumin levels less than 3.3 mg/l were able to predict the occurrence of persistent organ failure in 64% of patients, and albumin levels greater or equal to 3.3 mg/l were able to rule out the development of persistent organ failure in 90% of cases. So, we found that albumin as a single laboratory analysis is a good prognostic indicator as it is able to sort patients early into high-risk and low-risk groups for persistent organ failure and thus enables us to monitor them and take medical procedures as early as possible.