Treatment
The different treatment modalities for management of chronic pancreatitis are medical measures, therapeutic endoscopy and surgery. Treatment is directed, when possible, to the underlying cause, and to relieve pain and malabsorption. Insulin dependent diabetes mellitus may occur and need long term insulin therapy.
The abdominal pain can be very severe and require high doses of analgesics, sometimes including opiates. Disability and mood problems are common, although early diagnosis and support can make these problems manageable. Alcohol cessation and dietary modifications (low-fat diet) are important to manage pain and slow the calcific process. Recent research indicates smoking may be a high-risk factor.
Read more about this topic: Chronic Pancreatitis
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)