Prevalence of autoimmune pancreatitis in Japan from a nationwide survey in 2002

Because autoimmune pancreatitis is a new disease entity, there are no data with regard to its prevalence. To estimate the number of patients with autoimmune pancreatitis in Japan, we randomly selected hospitals using stratification and asked them how many patients they had with pancreatitis in 2002 who fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for autoimmune pancreatitis as proposed by the Japan Pancreas Society. The number of patients with autoimmune...