Management of analgesia in acute pancreatitis: Results of a national survey.

Introduction: Acute pancreatitis is one of the main reasons for digestive admissions. Adequate pain treatment is crucial in its management. However, there are hardly any descriptions of the analgesic guidelines used in our setting.

Methods: On-line survey on analgesic management in acute pancreatitis, aimed at attending physicians and residents practising in Spain.

Results: Two hundred and nine physicians from 88 centres responded to the survey. Ninety percent were specialists in gastrointestinal medicine and 69% worked in a tertiary centre. The majority (64.4%) do not routinely use scales to measure pain. When choosing a drug, experience in its use was the most important factor. The most commonly prescribed initial treatments are: combination of paracetamol and metamizole (53.5%), paracetamol alone (19.1%) and metamizole alone (17.4%). As rescue: meperidine (54.8%), tramadol (17.8%), morphine chloride (17.8%) and metamizole (11.5%). Continuous perfusion is used in 8.2% of initial treatments. Physicians with >10 years of service use more metamizole as monotherapy (50%), while residents and attending physicians with <10 years of service prescribe it in combination with paracetamol (85%). If progression is needed, morphine chloride and meperidine are mainly used. The speciality of the respondent, the size of the work centre and the unit/service where the patients were admitted did not influence the analgesia prescribed. Satisfaction with pain management reached 7.8/10 (SD 0.98).

Conclusion: In our setting, metamizole and paracetamol are the most commonly used analgesics as initial pain treatment in acute pancreatitis, and meperidine is the most commonly used rescue analgesic.