Correlation of Non-invasive and Invasive Oxygenation for the Diagnosis of Respiratory Dysfunction in Acute Pancreatitis

Acute pancreatitis (AP) is an inflammatory process of the pancreas and is one of the main causes of hospital admission of gastrointestinal origin. The annual incidence is between 13 to 45 per 100,000 habitants. The etiology may correspond to vesicular gallstones, excessive alcohol consumption, drugs, among others. Risk factors such as smoking and type 2 diabetes mellitus have been found to increase the risk of pancreatitis by 1.86 to 2.89 times.

Pulmonary complications are the most frequent in this group of patients, approximately in 75% of cases, they vary from hypoxemia to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In the first 2 days of hospital admission, tachypnea, mild respiratory alkalosis and hypoxemia may occur, usually without radiological manifestations, however 33% of patients with AP have pulmonary complications with symtoms and radiological signs, some of them are atelectasis (15%), small pleural effusion (4-17%) mainly of right lung and pulmonary edema (8-50%).

Non-invasive methods would allow faster identification of patients with hypoxemia or patients who have pulmonary organ failure. (6) There is no evidence on the usefulness of SpO2 / FiO2 (SF) as a predictor of hypoxemia and its correlation with PaO2 / FiO2 in acute pancreatitis, however its continuous calculation can greatly reduce arterial gas intake and decrease adverse events and costs.