ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the characteristics of common causes of acute pancreatitis (AP) in China and to evaluate the association of the aetiology with the severity of disease.Methods The relevant literature was searched from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database (1989.1-2015.3),WANFANG database (1999.1-2015.3),VIP database (1994.1-2015.3),and China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD).To collect related literature about aetiology and the severity of acute pancreatitis,Meta analysis was performed for gallstone,alcohol,hyperlipidemia and other AP from the aspects of the severity of disease in the literature which reaches the criteria.Results The Meta analysis included 24 clinical articles which were accordance with the criteria,totally 17359 patients,including 8673 cases of biliary AP [6690 cases of mild acute pancreatitis (MAP),1983 cases of acute necrotizing pancreatitis (ANP)],1408 cases of alcoholic AP (1022 cases of MAP,386 cases of ANP),1753 cases of hyperlipidemia AP (1107 cases of MAP,646 cases of ANP),and 5525 cases of other aetiology (4179 cases of MAP,1346 cases of ANP).The Meta analysis showed that among the common causes which was developed to AP,there was significant difference between biliary AP and alcohol AP (OR =0.65,95％ CI:0.45 ～0.93,P ＜ 0.05).There was significant difference between biliary AP and hyperlipidemia AP (OR =0.51,95％ CI:0.33 ～0.79,P ＜0.05).However,there was no significant difference between alcoholic AP with hyperlipidemia AP (OR =0.70,OR =0.70,95％ CI:0.46 ～ 1.05,P ＞ 0.05).Conclusions There is difference in the severity of AP caused by different reasons in China.There is more likely that hyperlipidemia AP and alcohol AP easily developed into ANP than biliary AP.However,further investigation and large-scale clinical trials will be needed to confirm this conclusion.