Acute pancreatitis (AP) continues to present a substantial burden to patients and
healthcare personnel. Despite its occasionally severe progression and high mortality
rate, there is no specific therapy that could be routinely applied in patients with
AP. Here, we review treatment possibilities in AP, describe how the treatment approaches
have changed in pancreatic cancer as an analogy, and point out potential causes for
the failure of clinical trials on AP. We highlight that instead of attempting to discover
generalized treatment options that could be used in any AP patient, it is time for
a paradigm shift in the treatment of AP, which would help to focus more on individual
patients or specific patient subpopulations when designing clinical trials and therapeutic
approaches (similarly as in pancreatic cancer). Since the recruitment of specific
patient subpopulations with AP could take excessive time if clinical centers work
separately, the development of precision medicine in AP would require to establish
an expert committee, eg, Pancreatitis Precision Medicine Interest Group, which could
organize and coordinate the activities of the joined centers. With the joined forces
of expert clinicians and leading centers, a new era could start in the treatment of
AP, in which personalized treatment options could be discovered and introduced to
efficiently reduce the burden of the disease on patients and healthcare workers.
