OVERVIEW
This page is dedicated to organizing various examples of standardized exam questions whose answer is chronic pancreatitis. While this may seem a odd practice, it is useful to see multiple examples of how chronic pancreatitis will be characterized on standardized exams (namely the boards and the shelf exams). This page is not meant to be used as a traditional question bank (as all of the answers will be the same), however seeing the classic “test” characterization for a disease is quite valuable.
QUESTION EXAMPLES
Question # 1
A 65 year old male is seen in the clinic for his chronic abdominal pain. he has pain in the epigastric region that is better when he leans forward, but is worse when he leans back. He has a long past history of alcoholism, and currently is being treated for HIV. His pain is constant, and radiates to his back. His pain has been present there for years. He explains that he has diarrhea that is difficult to flush, and that he has lost about 10 lbs in the las year. His lab results show a HgA1c of 8.3 and his albumin is 2.4. An abdominal X-ray reveals the presence of calcification over the area of the pancreas. His lipase is currently 50. What is the diagnosis in this patient?
Question # 2
A 60 year old male is seen in the hospital for epigastric pain. he explains that he has daily and constant pain that radiates to his back. It is quite severe, and is worse when he eats food. Leaning forward makes it feel better. He has noticed that he has lost about 10 pounds over the past few months. He also admits to having diarrhea with stools that are sticky, and challenging to flush. He remarks that his stools “smell terrible”. He has also developed diabetes however does not take any diabetes medications at this time. He has a long history of alcoholism however finally quite about 1 year ago. He explains that when he was younger he had multiple diagnosis of acute pancreatitis, however has not had an attack since the age of 45. What is the likely diagnosis in this patient?
Page Updated: 03.12.2017