Objective: Acute pancreatitis is an inflammatory disease of the pancreas with local and systemic complications, and high mortality and morbidity. A variety of scoring systems have been developed for the early detection of severe acute pancreatitis. However, they are not feasible enough to detect severe patients in the early period. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and etiology of acute pancreatitis, clinical presentation, early diagnosis of severe pancreatitis, length of hospital stay and complications.

Methods: A total of 150 patients with acute pancreatitis and 36 age and gender matched healthy controls were included. NLR was calculated within the first 24 hours of admission to the hospital. The results were compared with disease etiology, activity indices, complications, and length of hospital stay.

Results: In patients with acute pancreatitis, NLR levels (7.0±9.3) were found to be significantly higher than in the control group (1.8±0.6) (p<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between biliary and non-biliary pancreatitis groups in terms of neutrophil, lymphocyte, NLR, CRP and sedimentation levels (p>0.05). Regarding Ranson’s criteria and Modified Glasgow Prognostic score, NLR was significantly higher in patients with severe pancreatitis (p<0.05). However, there was no similar correlation with Balthazar score.

Conclusion: NLR was shown to increase in patients with acute pancreatitis as well as in other inflammatory conditions. NLR may be useful as an easily applicable parameter in the early diagnosis of disease and prediction of disease activity in patients with acute pancreatitis.