Acute pancreatitis is a rare entity among pediatric population, whose incidence has increased in the last two decades. However, there are few studies on this condition, so its therapeutic management is unsteady, especially in severe cases. In this article, we describe our experience in a pediatric intensive care unit in the management of 3 clinical cases with pancreatitis occured in the last months. We applied the guidelines extracted from the clinical guides about management of acute pancreatitis in adult patients, based on improving analgesia, administration of intensive fluid therapy and initial pancreatic rest with early reintroduction of enteral nutrition, which showed a good subsequent clinical evolution. Our main purpose, given the increase in the incidence of this entity, is to emphasize the importance of a high level of clinical suspicion when facing a case of abdominal pain that may allow an early diagnosis and a quick establishment of a proper treatment in these cases, as well as to highlight the most important facts of its management.

Objective: To determine if the rapid rehydration is an effective method to correct the dehydration in children with acute gastroenteritis and mild to moderate dehydration checking if it allows the restoration of the hydration state in less time in comparison with the traditional method.

Methods: It is an analytical-descriptive retrospective study set in the emergency department about children presenting mild to moderate isonatremic dehydration triggered by acute gastroenteritis, and who have needed intravenous rehydration after the failure of oral tolerance. A total of 42 cases were compiled and two protocols of rehydration were compared: rapid rehydration (19 cases) and traditional rehydration (23 cases).

Results: The time used for intravenous rehydration was less in the rapid rehydration protocol in comparison to the tradition¬al one, with averages of 3.53 hours (DS: 1.3) and 12.04 hours (DS: 4.08) respectively. This difference was statistically significant (p

Conclusion: Rapid intravenous rehydration poses an alternative to the classic protocol with several advantages such as they are: facility of calculation with less possibility of errors; faster improvement of the hydration state and patient well being that allows an early tolerance to oral feeding; faster correction of serum electrolyte abnormalities and acidosis due to the prompt restoration of renal perfusion; and this is achieved safely without increasing the risk of complications such as hypernatremia.