Diane Regained Her Life After Complications From Pancreatitis

A spring day in March of 2022 started out normal for Diane Espinoza. She was at her job as a business office manager for a nursing home. Suddenly, she felt severe stomach pain. She tried to ignore the discomfort, but within 30 minutes, the pain had become unbearable.

“I called my husband and told him I thought I needed to go to the emergency room,” Diane said. “He was shocked. This wasn’t like me. I was always the type of person to push through pain, but I’d never felt like this before.”

At the ER, tests revealed Diane had acute pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas) from gallstones. Gallstones are hard deposits of bile in your gallbladder and a common cause of pancreatitis. She had surgery to remove her gallbladder at Henry Ford Jackson Hospital and thought she was on the mend until a few weeks later.

Necrotizing pancreatitis and a pancreatic pseudocyst

In April, after her gallbladder surgery, the debilitating symptoms returned – intense stomach pain, nausea and fever. At Henry Ford Jackson, doctors discovered Diane had necrotizing pancreatitis, a dangerous complication of pancreatitis that causes pancreatic tissue to die. The pancreatitis had also produced a fluid-filled mass in her pancreas called a pancreatic pseudocyst.

“I normally weighed about 180 pounds,” said Diane. “But the fluid from the cyst put me at 280 pounds. Later, my doctors told me they weren’t sure if I was going to make it.”

Diane was referred to an acute care surgeon with expertise managing necrotizing pancreatitis at Henry Ford Hospital, Sina Khoshbin, M.D. The interventional radiology team at Henry Ford performed a minimally invasive procedure to place a catheter (thin, flexible tube) in Diane’s abdomen to drain the pseudocyst. The catheter stayed in place for nearly five months. During that time, Dr. Khoshbin and an interventional gastroenterologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Robert Pompa, M.D., oversaw Diane’s care as she adjusted to life with an external drain.

“I couldn’t work. I didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t do anything,” said Diane. “I was so depressed and thought my life would never be normal again. I cried the entire time. I just couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I was only 39. I’d always been healthy. It was a nightmare.”

The temporary drain was removed in August in hopes that the cyst had emptied completely. But less than a week later, Diane was back in the ER. Drs. Khoshbin and Pompa knew they needed to come up with a unique solution to address Diane’s condition.

An innovative approach delivers life-changing results

Drs. Pompa, Khoshbin and a multidisciplinary team of surgeons and digestive disease specialists at Henry Ford Health met several times to discuss Diane's complicated case. They planned a series of innovative procedures to help her find lasting relief.

“I really felt like they cared,” Diane says of the team at Henry Ford. “They were working together to find a treatment just for me. I felt special.”

In August 2022, Dr. Pompa performed an endoscopic procedure to place a plastic stent (thin tube) between the pseudocyst and Diane’s small intestine. The cyst would drain directly into her gastrointestinal tract, removing the fluid from her body through the normal digestive process and avoiding the need for another external drain.

In January 2023, Dr. Pompa performed an endoscopic cystogastrostomy. He placed a stent between the pseudocyst and Diane’s stomach for a more permanent drainage tract.

The stent stayed in place for nearly a year. During that time, tissue grew around the stent and formed a natural passageway where the cyst would continue to drain into her stomach.

By November 2023, doctors were able to remove the stent. And because they used a minimally invasive approach for these procedures, Diane was able to avoid complex and risky open surgeries.

Life looks bright and pain-free once again

A year after surgery, Diane still feels great. CT scans every few months show that everything looks normal. “I’m 100% myself again, like it never happened,” says Diane ecstatically.

I can do everything I could do before. The doctors at Henry Ford gave me my life back! I am Henry.