Morphological and functional alterations of small intestine in chronic pancreatitis.

Context: The small intestine in chronic pancreatitis has not been investigated yet thoroughly. It would be important to understand fat metabolism in the course of this disease and could be explained if the small intestine has some pathological conditions and, due to this reason, pancreatic enzyme substitution does not work in all patients.

Objective: To investigate the pathophysiology of small intestine in chronic pancreatitis and to show the reason why in some cases pancreatic enzyme substitution does not work properly.