[Acute pancreatitis: conservative therapy)].

Conservative treatment of acute pancreatitis is symptomatic and depends on the severity of the disease. For treatment of mild pancreatitis, fasting and intravenous application of fluids and analgetics is usually sufficient. Patients with severe pancreatitis should be monitored in an Intensive Care Unit and may require antibiotics. For treatment of acute pancreatitis, a large number of interventions has been suggested. They include nasogastric tubes, drugs which reduce pancreatic and gastric secretion, and treatments which inhibit activated proteases. Controlled studies have shown that most of these measures are ineffective. The value of early ERCP in acute pancreatitis is still under debate. ERCP appears to be helpful in biliary pancreatitis, especially if choledocholithiasis is present. Surgery should be reserved to those patients who do not respond to conservative treatment.