Early Onset Idiopathic Chronic Pancreatitis: Is there a Role for Endoscopic Treatment?

Layer et al. were the first to describe a different clinical course in patients with idiopathic chronic pancreatitis (ICP) as compared to those having alcoholic pancreatitis (AP) [1]. They found that patients with early onset ICP (onset before 35 years of age) have, initially and thereafter, a long course of severe pain but develop morphological and functional pancreatic damage slowly, whereas patients with late-onset ICP (onset after 35 years of age) have a mild and often painless course (pain absent in nearly 50 % of patients) confirming the earlier observations of Ammann et al. [2]. Both forms differ from AP in their equal gende