An investigation of pancreatic volume by disease using pancreatic volumetry

There are very few reports on pancreatic volumetry using multidetector-row computed tomography (MDCT). In the present study, we performed pancreatic volumetry for 148 patients who had undergone pancreatectomy at this institution between June 2006 and May 2011 and for 50 patients who had undergone laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) for cholecystolithiasis with no choledocholithiasis between January 2008 and May 2011. We then conducted a comparative investigation of pancreatic volume between the two groups.A strong positive correlation was observed between pancreatic volume and body surface area (BSA) in the LC patients. On the basis of these results, we investigated pancreatic volume by disease using a corrected pancreatic volume that excluded BSA. The corrected pancreatic volume for patients with ordinary pancreatic cancer (invasive ductal carcinoma; IDC) was significantly smaller than that for patients with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) or bile duct cancer (BDC) and LC patients (P < 0.001). Furthermore, the corrected pancreatic volume for BDC patients was significantly larger than the volume for IPMN or LC patients. Corrected pancreatic volume is therefore useful for the differential diagnosis of tumours of the pancreatic head