Safi Khuri
Rambam Health Care Campus, HPB and Surgical Oncology unit, Haifa, Israel
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Surgery Curr Res
The pandemic corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has led to a significant and dramatic worldwide increase in morbidity and mortality rates throughout the year 2020. Although most patients present with respiratory symptoms such as cough, fever and shortness of breath, gastrointestinal symptoms have increasingly been reported and highly recognized as a major element of patients’ presentation. It was found that Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors (the entry receptors for SARS-CoV-2) are expressed in the pancreas in addition to the lungs, kidneys and the rest of the gastrointestinal tract, which raises the hypothesis that COVID-19 can stand as an etiology for acute pancreatitis in certain circumstances. Herein, we present a case of a COVID-19 patient who presented to the ER with clinical, laboratory and radiological findings of acute pancreatitis several days after being diagnosed with COVID-19 infection. He was admitted and treated conservatively. Several weeks following the initial episode, the patient developed a huge pancreatic pseudocyst, which was treated successfully with endoscopic cystgastrostomy. To the best of our knowledge, following a meticulous review of the current English literature, this is the second case of pancreatic pseudocyst development following acute pancreatitis due to COVID-19 infection.
Dr Safi Khuri, MD, is a Senior General Surgeon and an attending physician at the HepatoPancreatoBiliary (HPB) and Surgical Oncology Unit, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel. Due to his ability to meet deadlines and go the extra miles, Dr Khuri completed a number of important roles during his career, such as being the chief resident for 3 consecutive years during general surgery residency program, director of the internship program at his department for several years, as well as, being the tutor for several groups of medical students.
