RESUMO
Acute recurrent pancreatitis has a variety of etiologies. We experienced a case of a tumor-forming pancreatitis in a 49 year old Korean woman who also had pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasm III (PanIN-III), and this manifested just like recurrent pancreatitis. She had a history of recurrent pancreatitis. She was found to have an early stage of pancreatic cancer via computed tomography and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography. EUS guided fine needle aspiration (FNA) showed only many acinar cells of the pancreas. But due to the possibility of her having pancreatic carcinoma, she underwent distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy with lymph node dissection. Pathologically, the tumor of the pancreatic body showed secondary changes with focal fibrosis from the localized chronic pancreatitis. PanIN-III was observed in the pancreatic duct within the tumor, and there were no cancerous findings in the 13 dissected lymph nodes.