Treatment Options
The Pancreas Care Center offers comprehensive treatment options for children with pancreatic disorders. These include:
- Medications, such as enzyme replacement therapy, to help children with pancreas disorders digest food properly. Other medications can be helpful in easing symptoms such as nausea.
- Nutritional therapy Our experienced team can create a personalized nutritional therapy plan, including dietary guidelines, to promote proper healing.
- Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) This technique can be used to diagnose and treat pancreas complications such as narrowing, irregularities or blockages in the pancreatic duct.
- Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) An endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) helps doctors treat diseases in and around the digestive tract. EUS can find problems that other imaging tests may not be able to find.
- Surgical intervention Certain cases may require surgical procedures, such as pancreas resection, pancreas drainage procedures and total pancreatectomy with islet auto-transplantation (TPIAT).
- Pain Management Most patients with pancreatitis experience pain, so the Pancreas Care Center offers a range therapies, both medication and non-medication, that focus on improving function and quality of life in the most effective and safe way possible. Learn more about pain management.
- Pancreatic exocrine function testing Since chronic pancreatitis and other disorders of the pancreas can result in exocrine insufficiency, our physicians may perform direct pancreatic function testing to assess the degree of insufficiency. Missed exocrine insufficiency can result in weight loss, poor growth and malnutrition.
- Pancreatic endocrine function Since chronic pancreatitis and other disorders of the pancreas can result in diabetes, our pediatric endocrinologists follow patients closely in the Pancreas Care Center. They provide specialized measurements of islet cell function to determine the need for insulin or other medications, and also direct the management of glucose control for patients who undergo a TPIAT before and after surgery.
