Pancreatic duct obliteration: clinical application, morphological and functional effects.

Pancreatic duct obliteration is a procedure to abolish exocrine secretion in order to prevent complications such as leakage, abscess and fistula occurring formation after diversion techniques like pancreatico-enterostomy. Pancreatic duct obliteration is applicable after all sorts of partial pancreatic resections, pancreas transplantation included. Although the method is safe, experiments have shown that not only complete exocrine atrophy is induced, but that also the endocrine architecture is destroyed. In dogs, the destruction of islet architecture leads to about 70% reduction of the insulin secreting capacity. It is not known whether such a severe reduction of endocrine function also occurs after pancreatic duct obliteration in man. This would discard duct obliteration as a procedure suitable for pancreas transplantation, since optimal endocrine pancreas function is the aim of pancreas transplantation in patients suffering from type-I diabetes mellitus.