What Do These High Amylase And Lipase Levels Indicate?

Posted on Mon, 5 May 2014

Question: i am a 62 year old male i had a successful open heart surgery almost a year ago where i had 2 arteries replaced i am not currently on any medications except for aspirin i went for a complete blood test and found that all are normal except for my serum amylase and lipase levels are extremely elevated around 420 and 230 i have no abdominal pain and no pains all over then i decided to do an MRI for the pancreas and an ultrasound and they came out perfectly normal so i re did the blood work after 2 weeks and the serum lipase was 49 UL and the serum amylase level was 105 UL which i think is within normal levels i just don't understand why they were highly elevated the first time? do u recommend any medications i should take or a certain diet i should follow? thank you

Answered by Dr. Grzegorz Stanko (14 minutes later)

Brief Answer: Pancreas irritation. Detailed Answer: Hello! Thank you for the query. Amylase around 420 and lipase around 230 are not extremely high levels. Please note that in case of acute pancreatitis, this enzymes levels are around few thousands. Results like yours can appear due to fatty meal, spicy meal or alcohol intake. We can call this pancreas irritation. As your recent pancreas enzymes results are fine, you do not need to worry. Try to avoid fatty foods, spicy foods and alcohol. No medication is necessary. Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further questions. Regards.

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Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar