Dilemmas in autoimmune pancreatitis. Surgical resection or not?

Surgical treatment is not commonly recommended in the management of autoimmune pancreatitis. The article describes a dilemma in diagnostics and treatment of a 68-year old man with the mass in the head of the pancreas that mimicked pancreatic cancer and that was diagnosed as a type 1 autoimmune pancreatitis (IgG4-related pancreatitis) after a surgical resection. Diagnosis of the autoimmune pancreatitis is a real clinical challenge, as in the current diagnostic criteria exists some degree of overlap in the findings between autoimmune pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer (indicated by the similarity in radiologic findings, elevation of IgG4, sampling errors in pancreatic biopsy, and the possibility of synchronous autoimmune pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer). Despite the generally accepted corticosteroids as the primary treatment modality in autoimmune pancreatitis, we believe that surgical resection remains necessary in a specific subgroup of patients with autoimmune pancreatitis (Fig. 4, Ref. 37).