The prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with chronic pancreatitis: a meta-analysis

Aim. Systematization of data on the prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP). Materials and methods. MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane, the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) through June 2020 were searched to identify studies evaluating the prevalence of sarcopenia in CP. Additionally, a search for relevant abstracts was carried out in the electronic databases of the conferences of the European Pancreatic Club (EPC), the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) and the European Congress of Radiology (ECR). For the final analysis, publications were selected that used validated muscle mass assessment tests with detailed descriptive statistics to enable the resulting data to be included in the meta-analysis. Results. The final analysis included 7 studies involving 604 patients with CP. The pooled prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with CP was 42.09% (95% confidence interval - CI 27.845-57.055). There was significant heterogeneity between the results (p<0.0001; I-2=90.81%). When studies with a total sample of less than 50 patients were excluded from the meta-analysis, the overall prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with CP was 22.24% (95% CI 15.475-29.847). Conclusion. The present meta-analysis demonstrated that sarcopenia is a common complication of CP and is observed in about 2 out of 5 patients with this inflammatory disease of the pancreas. Given the high incidence of adverse outcomes associated with sarcopenia, it is necessary to promptly diagnose this pathological condition in patients with CP.