The role of the Inflammatory Biomarkers in the Early Production of the Severity of Paediatric Acute Pancreatitis

Aim: Studies of paediatric acute pancreatitis have remained in the shadow of adult literature for many
years, and have only increased following the recent acceptance of the severity classification. There is now
a need to determine inflammatory biomarkers which will be able to rapidly predict in the early stage which
patients will develop severe disease. This study's purpose was to research the efficacy as early predictors
and determine cutoff values for inflammatory biomarkers including the systemic immune-inflammation
index (SII), and the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR).
Patients and Methods: A retrospective evaluation was made of the clinical characteristics, laboratory
test results, and imaging findings of 53 children diagnosed with acute pancreatitis between 2019-2022.
The study population were separated into groups as ‘mild’ and ‘moderately severe-severe’ according
to severity. The groups were compared in respect of inflammatory markers. Factors predicting disease
severity were evaluated with ROC curve analysis. For the significant cutoff values, positive predictive
value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), sensitivity and s pecificity were calculated.
Results: The NLR, and SII values were found to be statistically significantly higher in the “moderately
severe-severe” group than in th “mild” group (p<0.001 for all). The cutoff values of NLR≥3.33 (AUC:0.894,
95% CI:0.81-0.979, PPV 89.7%, NPV 83.3%), and SII≥1225.57 (AUC:0.912, 95% CI:0.831-0.992, PPV
90.0%, NPV 87.0%) were determined to be able to predict disease severity with high sensitivity and
specificity.
Conclusion: The NLR, and SII are inflammatory biomarkers that can make an early prediction of a poor
outcome in paediatric acute pancreatitis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to have
evaluated the prognostic importance of these biomarkers, in pae diatric acute pancreatitis.