Acute pancreatitis: evaluation of the prognostic criteria of the latest Balthazar tomographic classification.

The use of prognostic criteria to detect potentially acute pancreatitis can allow us to select patients most in need of special attention. Of the many possible criteria, we used Ranson's clinical analytic criteria and Balthazar's tomographic criteria, and compared them to the latest criteria of Balthazar, in which pancreatic necrosis figures as the principal prognostic factor. Tomographic evaluation of pancreatic necrosis was shown to be the best prognostic marker in acute pancreatitis, with the greatest sensitivity and specificity of all methods used with one-hundred consecutive patients admitted with acute pancreatitis.