Contribution of ultrasound to the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis and to evaluating its main complications.

Chronic pancreatitis is a disease with a potentially severe evolution due to the pain altering life quality and to the possibility of causing exocrine and endocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Ultrasound represents the main imaging technique to be used in this disease since the identification of pancreatic calcifications has diagnostic significance. Endoscopic ultrasound may sometimes identify parenchymal changes facilitating diagnosis in the early stages of chronic pancreatitis when transabdominal ultrasound and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography show normal situations or non-characteristic changes.