Chronic pancreatitis of the head of the pancreas in hyperplasia of the body and tail of the pancreas]

We report a case of chronic pancreatitis of the head of the pancreas complicated with insulin-requiring diabetes mellitus, in a 44-year-old woman with hypoplasia of the dorsal pancreas. Preoperative ultrasonography, computerized tomography and angiography revealed a calcifying retroperitoneal mass, which on explorative laparotomy proved to be a severe chronic pancreatitis of the head of the pancreas with a finding of abnormal visibility of the confluens venosum and absence of both the corpus and the tail of the pancreas. The postoperative course following pylorus-preserving duodenopancreatectomy was uneventful.