Indulgence in fatty BBQ late at night is being touted as the cause of a Nanjing man developing acute abdominal pain that, in turn, was the result of his triglycerides, the most common type of fat in the body, soaring to 24 times normal levels.
It was in such pain with what would turn out to be severe acute pancreatitis that 40-year-old Mr. Li was recently sent to the emergency room of Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Nanjing.
As the Yangtze Evening News reported yesterday, 3 December, a blood test found that Mr. Li’s blood was obviously stratified, with the upper layer composed of milky white lipids, commonly known in China as “milk blood” (牛奶血) or elsewhere as “chyloblood”.
That stratification was the result of Li’s level of triglycerides, or the concentration of glucose, reaching some 54.81 Millimoles Per Litre (mmol/L), while his total cholesterol level stood at 17.16 mmol/L, about 3 times a normal value.
Meanwhile, an emergency CT examination revealed Li to have an amylase level of 871 units per litre (U/L) and a lipase level of 2,427 U/L. A normal level for amylase, or the protein which helps with carbohydrate digestion, is 40-140 U/L; while for lipase that assists with fat digestion a normal level is 10-140 U/L.
Transferred to the Department of Critical Care Medicine for treatment, Li was administered with plasma exchange and bedside hemofiltration, during which time he developed a high fever and suffered respiratory failure that required ventilator support to keep him alive.
His condition improved, Li was transferred back to the Hospital’s gastroenterology department general ward and was discharged after recovery, to receive repeated lectures from medical staff, imploring him to adjust his diet, exercise moderately and control his weight.
With holiday gatherings around the corner, excessive drinking and high-fat meals are inevitable. Jiangsu Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital predicts that, based on experience in previous years, the number of acute pancreatitis cases it admits will increase significantly.
Acute pancreatitis has both a sudden onset and rapid progression. It can involve organs and systems throughout the body and progress to severe acute pancreatitis, a condition carrying a high mortality rate.
