Pancreatic ultrasound is one of the main types of diagnosis, giving a real idea of the degree of its damage and the stage of the disease. It should be noted that the pancreas, being one of the most significant digestive organs, is located in the depth of the body behind the stomach, which makes it difficult to use other methods of research.
Diffuse changes in the structure of the pancreas can be uniform and say that the processes occurring in this organ are of a general rather than a local nature. At the same time, tissues can become denser or vice versa, lose their density, which occurs with edema and inflammatory processes.
If diffuse changes in the structure of the pancreatic tissue are uneven, this may indicate the presence of various tumors, cysts or sclerosis. In this case, separately distinguish diffuse changes only parenchyma of the pancreas, or rather its special tissues that have a glandular structure.
It is believed that the most often diffuse changes in the parenchyma causes acute pancreatitis, one of the most dangerous diseases of the pancreas, the cause of the development, which is the stagnation of pancreatic juices or their increased amount. In this case, foci of inflammation, distributed unevenly, hemorrhages are formed, as well as pseudocysts, in which dead cells and pus accumulate. All these formations have an uneven density and change the diffuse structure of tissues, which is revealed by the ultrasound investigation.
The diffuse structure of the parenchyma also develops in diabetes mellitus, but the character is completely different: healthy cells that produce insulin, the so-called islets of Langerhans, are replaced by a fatty and connective tissue that is more dense in its consistency, which is invariably detected as a change in echogenicity during ultrasound.
Most clearly they are expressed in tumors and various neoplasms in its tissues, the size and location of which can be different. But carrying out of US can not give the unequivocal answer about character of neoplasms: necessarily carrying out of additional researches and analyzes. So, for example, it can be benign cysts, sclerotic changes in the tissues of the parenchyma, as well as various abscesses.