Acute pancreatitis is a sudden and potentially life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas, which results from digestive enzyme activation within the pancreas, leading to tissue damage.

Read at the Quarterly Meeting of the Rhode Island Modical Society, held in Providence, December 1, 1892.

Pancreas biopsies are graded according to the following histologic criteria: degree of inflammation, eosinophilia, acinar inflammation, ductal inflammation, endothelialitis, and necrotizing arteritis.