Chronic relapsing pancreatitis in childhood.

Chronic intermittent abdominal pain in childhood, reported to afflict nine to 12 per cent of all children, is an enigma of such magnitude that more than 30 per cent of these patients reach adulthood with persistent problems and no definitive diagnosis. This report discusses 20 children with such pain (9 girls and 11 boys) in whom routine diagnostic evaluation failed to identify the etiology. Selected special diagnostic studies and considerable suspicion for chronic pancreatitis prompted surgical intervention in three patients. Two were unsuspected and identified at celiotomy as having pancreatitis. The morphine-neostigmine evocative test, modified in some cases to confirm its usefulness, was helpful, accurate, and definitive in all 13 patients on whom it was used. Eighteen patients were confirmed surgically to have pancreatic disease, and two patients are unoperated with continued pancreatic pain. Ductal pathology was believed present in all. Of 18 patients operated, 11 patients are asymptomatic, five patients are improved, and two patients are considered failures 6 months to 10 years following surgery.