Arthritis Complicating Acute Pancreatitis–a Rare but Important Condition to be Distinguished from Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Chronic arthritis in childhood is a rather uncommon condition, but still it is often the first diagnosis of choice whenever a child presents with polyarthritis. However, there are several conditions to be excluded before this diagnosis finally can be made. Polyarthritis complicating acute traumatic pancreatitis represents one of the diagnoses on this list of exclusions. The fact that bone lesions, polyarthritis and cutaneous nodules may be complications of pancreatic disease in children has been reported in pediatric journals only a few times before, last time ten years ago (1, 2). We here report on a patient with acute traumatic pancreatitis who was admitted to hospital with acute polyarthritis as his main symptom.