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Pancreatic exocrine secretion has been studied in 10 patients with documented duodenal ulcer before and after 4 weeks of cimetidine treatment (1 g/die). This chronic 'short term' cimetidine administration did not result in any substantial modification of exo-pancreatic response stimulated by Secretin and Caerulein. From this point of view the drug could be employed in the treatment of pancreatic insufficiency in order to obtain a better utilization of pancreatic enzyme supplement. It is, however, questionable if such a 'long-term' therapy may be responsible for the appearance or the relapse of a peptic ulcer.

Secretin (1 CU/Kg) plus Caerulein (100 ng/Kg) or Cholecystokinin (1 or 2 IvyU/Kg) were given by rapid intravenous injection (Schedule 1) or by continuous infusion (Schedule 2) to 63 control subjects (C) and 69 patients affected by chronic pancreatitis (CP). Duodenal juice was collected for two and four 30-minute periods in schedule 1 and schedule 2, respectively. Volume, bicarbonate, and enzyme content were measured. Secretin-Daerulein, by rapid intravenous injection, showed a strong overlapping between C and CP values and led to some side-effects. Secretin-Caerulein by continuous intravenous infusion gave almost identical results as the Secretin-Cholecystokinin.

A comparative study concerning the diagnostic importance of clinical, humoral, morphological and instrumental parameters had been carried out on 105 patients affected by chronic liver disease (51 cases with liver cirrhosis, 15 with metastatic tumors, 10 with liver steatosis and 29 with chronic hepatitis). The final diagnosis of the patients used for the comparison was formulated considering the greatest numbers of data. The results of this study can be drawn as follows: --clinical and laboratory data show satisfactory diagnostic value principally in patients suffering from liver cirrhosis (90 per ceny) and metastatic tumors (93 per cent); --peritoneoscopy appears to be generally the most useful procedure with the most significance value above all in cirrhotic patients; --morphological examination in biopsy specimen results of the greatest importance in patients affected by chronic hepatitis and hepatosteatosis while rather high has been the percentage of false negatives in secondary tumors of the liver (40 per cent) and cirrhosis (68 per cent); --scintiphotoscanning is generally less useful as a diagnostic tool than peritoneoscopy a part of the cases of metastatic tumors. In such a condition the diagnostic power of both the procedures results to be identical; --it may be concluded that an integrating diagnostic information generally results to be the most precise and maximally capable of reducing the number of false negatives. In individual cases, of course, the less important procedure shows to have the maximum of diagnostic capacity.