Myocardial function in acute pancreatitis.

Fifteen patients with acute pancreatitis had 68 physiologic cardiopulmonary assessments performed, and they were compared with 61 performed on normal postoperative patients, and 113 on 41 cirrhotics. It was found that the patients with pancreatitis have an elevated cardiac index (CI), which is not due to the hyperdynamic hemodynamic state found in cirrhotics. In spite of this, the Sarnoff curves demonstrated that pancreatitis was accompanied by a myocardial depression p less than 0.03, not found in hyperdynamic cirrhotics. Cirrhotics are unable to increase their oxygen consumption in response to an increase in CI, as do normal patients or those with acute pancreatitis. In cirrhotics the hemodynamic lesion occurs at the capillary level with the opening of arteriovenous shunts which rob the tissues of their nutritive blood supply, while the patient with acute pancreatitis has a primary myocardial depression and his peripheral vasculature reacts like that of a normal person.