Background: Acute pancreatitis, characterized by local and systemic inflammation, is a common causeof acute abdominal conditions. Revision of the 1992 Atlanta Classification provides a newer classificationto describe clinical behavior and imaging characteristics of acute pancreatitis. This study aims at assessing changes in serum lipid profile in acute pancreatitis and to correlate level of serum lipid profile
with severity of acute pancreatitis and outcome of the patient.

Methods: The study group included 70 cases of acute pancreatitis and control group included 70 cases of non traumatic acute abdominal conditions other than acute pancreatitis. The data for this study
include the lipid profile of the patients. Results: This study demonstrated a significant lowering of HDL in cases of severe acute pancreatitis when compared to mild and moderate acute pancreatitis and showed  that duration of hospital stay of a patient was more in cases of patients with significantly lower levels of HDL. Also there was lowering of all three lipid profile values of HDL, LDL and total cholesterol in cases of
acute pancreatitis when compared to control group.

Conclusion: Serum lipid levels can be used as one of the components for assessing the severity of acute pancreatitis and as a prognostic indicator to predict outcome of patients with severe acute pancreatitis.

Keywords: Acute Pancreatitis; Severity of AcutePancreatitis; Serum Lipid Profile Levels.