Prognostic value of admission red blood cell distribution width in acute pancreatitis: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) has been proved to be a strong prognostic marker in various diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, viral hepatitis etc. But its prognostic value in acute pancreatitis (AP) remains controversial. The aim of this systematic review is to determine the prognostic value of RDW in AP.

METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane, Google scholar, and Web of Science were searched on March 2, 2017 to identify studies that investigated the association between RDW and the prognosis of AP. The eligible studies were reviewed and summarized.

RESULTS: In total, 2008 articles were screened. Seven studies were included in the final analysis. Five studies estimated the prognostic value of RDW using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, and multivariable analysis was performed in only four studies. The major design weaknesses of eligible studies are their retrospective design and some of potential confounding factors were not adjusted.

CONCLUSIONS: Current evidence and findings support that high admission RDW can be used as a biomarker to identify the AP patients who are at high risk of mortality. However, due to the weaknesses of available studies, further well-designed studies with large sample size and various outcome endpoints are needed to rigorously evaluate the prognostic value of RDW in AP.