Risk of carcinoma in IgG4-associated autoimmune pancreatitis – a single center experience

Introduction: Immunoglobulin G4-associated pancreatitis has been recently regarded as a novel and challenging entity. This disease is part of a complex autoimmune disorder with multi-organic involvement characterized with IgG4-positive plasmacytic infiltration of various tissues and organs with consequent sclerosis which responds excellent to steroid therapy. Most commonly affected organs are the pancreas in sense of autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) and biliary tract, the so called autoimmune cholangitis (AIC). It is suggested that patients may be at risk to develop malignancies since AIP shares a number of clinical, biochemical, and imaging features with pancreas- and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA).