Studies on pancreatic duct system. II Comparative study of histological features, and three-dimensional reconstruction of pancreatic ducts.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of pancreatic ducts were made from specimens of pancreases from chronic pancreatic injury dogs following adjuvant injection, one patient with chronic non-alcoholic pancreatitis, and 2 patients with chronic alcoholic pancreatitis. The ductal alterations of alcoholic pancreatitis showed more apparent changes than those of non-alcoholic pancreatitis. The lesions in experiment such as uneven surface, irregular dilatation, tortuosity, and anastomosis, resembled to those of alocholic calcifying pancreatitis. Although gross appearance of the reconstructed ducts in advanced cases of experimental pancreatic injury revealed some resemblance to that of alcoholic calcifying pancreatitis, histologically, the epithelial changes of the former were different from those of the latter. Thus we concluded that more complicated factors than those considered in experiment play a role in combination in the pathogenesis of bead-like dilatation of the pancreatic ducts of chronic pancreatitis.