**Author details**

*Pancreatitis*

**5. Conclusion**

practice should be encouraged.

(depression, anxiety etc.) are linked most often to alcohol abuse and might lead to pain manifestation and impaired QoL. A study, which enrolled non-alcoholic CP patients, significant depressive syndromes were associated with poor QoL. By the newest concepts, the quality of life assessment is an essential part of the monitoring and the outcome in patients with CP. The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC QLQ ) has developed a quality of life questionnaire, containing 30 questions (EORTC QLQ-C30), including an additional question about steatorrhea. The questionnaire correlates with body weight gain and a reduced number of daily defecations related to malnutrition and maldigestion. The quality of life improved after adequate dosing in both newly diagnosed and patients receiving suboptimal PERT. Later, an additional panel of 26 questions concerning pancreatic cancer patients (PAN26) was developed. In the United European Gastroenterology evidence based guidelines for the diagnosis and therapy of CP (HaPanEU), quality of life including pain should be assessed through validated questionnaires (SF-12, SF-36, EORTC QLQ C-30, GIQLI). However, effort should be point at improvement of variable factors as psychological status, tobacco, alcohol consumption and nutritional deficiencies in respect to improve QoL and further to delay disease progression, using therapeutic education and physical rehabilitation,

Chronic pancreatitis is a progressive fibro-inflammatory syndrome, leading to abdominal pain and later to endocrine and exocrine insufficiency. Patients with CP might suffer a wide variety of complications, including pancreatic cancer, splenic vein thrombosis, pseudocysts, duodenal or biliary obstruction, pancreatic calculi, pseudoaneurysm and cardiovascular events. Proper individual up-to-date approach to diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with CP are of fundamental importance to improve symptoms, detect early risk factors and reduce complications, which are associated with high mortality rate, and ensure better quality of life. Screening strategies development and their introduction into the clinical

behavioral support and medication [6, 99, 184–190].

**50**

Mila Dimitrova Kovacheva-Slavova1 \*, Plamen Georgiev Getsov2 , Georgi Borislavov Vladimirov3 and Borislav Georgiev Vladimirov1

1 Department of Gastroenterology, University Hospital "Tsaritsa Ioanna-ISUL", Medical University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria

2 Department of Medical Imaging, University Hospital "Tsaritsa Ioanna-ISUL", Medical University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria

3 Department of Cardiology, National Heart Hospital, Sofia, Bulgaria

\*Address all correspondence to: kovacheva\_mila@abv.bg

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
