Evaluation of etiological hypotheses and a study of early lesions in alcoholic pancreatitis.

Current understanding of the pathology of chronic pancreatitis secondary to chronic alcoholism is exclusively based on surgical biopsies or autopsy studies of the pancreatic gland from far-advanced stages of the disease. Biopsy of the pancreas is dangerous, and good experimental models for alcoholic pancreatitis are not available to evaluate the chronology of events in the pancreas. A classification system was proposed many years ago with various hypotheses on the pathogenesis of chronic pancreatitis. These hypotheses will be examined in relation to the empirical evidence.