3. Discussion
acute pancreatitis
ACUTE PANCREATITIS, MINOR, DISEASE, ACUTE PANCREATITIS
Acute pancreatitis is a high-incidence disease and current guidelines support in-hospital care, despite the severity. This implies a high economic burden in healthcare systems worldwide. Nonetheless, recent evidence suggests that mild acute pancreatitis can be safely and effectively treated with home monitoring with regular visits by a nurse under the supervision of a physician.This study may have limitations due to the open-label design and patient-reported outcomes. A patient’s knowledge of the assigned treatment arm could influence their view and reporting of their symptoms, although we do not believe this will be the case since treatments will be very similar, except for the administration route (for analgesic medication) and for the type of oral feeding. Additionally, following the usual clinical practice when managing admitted patients could generate different approaches between the different participating medical centers; however, the acute pancreatitis approach is quite standardized among the participating hospitals, with minor differences in the medication brands used by each center (similar to what is found in the real world).We expect the RHINO trial results to show that home monitoring is effective, safe, and not inferior to hospitalization for managing mild acute pancreatitis. We also expect to show that the economic costs are lower when treating these patients with home monitoring. Altogether, this multicenter large sample-sized trial could change the standard clinical approach to mild acute pancreatitis in Spain, kickstart similar trials throughout the world, optimize the use of limited healthcare budgets, and improve patients’ overall quality of life.