大规模回顾性研究可以识别疾病趋势，例如诱发因素、典型临床体征和组织学病变范围，这些在个体病例报告中无法确定。雪貂内分泌胰腺损伤已被广泛报道；然而，目前还没有对胰腺外分泌病变的深入研究。本回顾性分析介绍了雪貂外分泌胰腺病变的组织学特征、临床体征和并发疾病。报告了 77 个病变，包括腺泡细胞增生 (n = 32)、慢性胰腺炎 (n = 16)、急性胰腺炎 (n = 13)、腺泡细胞腺瘤 (n = 5)、腺泡细胞癌 (n = 4) 、腺泡细胞萎缩 (n = 3)、假定腺泡细胞发育不全 (n = 2) 和淋巴瘤 (n = 2)。我们的结果表明，腺泡细胞增生和慢性胰腺炎均可导致肉眼可见的胰腺结节。增生与肿瘤转化无关。此外，腺泡细胞腺瘤比癌稍常见，这与大多数关于雪貂肿瘤形成的报道相反。我们的研究结果还表明，急性胰腺炎可能是胰腺活检的后遗症，并且雪貂的慢性胰腺炎和糖尿病之间可能存在关联。最后，根据对部分病例的锌组织浓度测试，发现锌中毒不太可能是这些雪貂胰腺炎的原因。

Large-scale retrospective studies allow for identification of disease trends, such as predisposing factors, typical clinical signs, and range of histologic lesions, which cannot be determined in individual case reports. Lesions of the endocrine pancreas of ferrets are extensively reported; however, there are no in-depth investigations of lesions in the exocrine pancreas. This retrospective analysis presents the histologic features, clinical signs, and concurrent diseases of lesions in the exocrine pancreas of ferrets. Seventy-seven lesions were reported and included acinar cell hyperplasia (n = 32), chronic pancreatitis (n = 16), acute pancreatitis (n = 13), acinar cell adenoma (n = 5), acinar cell carcinoma (n = 4), acinar cell atrophy (n = 3), presumptive acinar cell hypoplasia (n = 2), and lymphoma (n = 2). Our results demonstrate that acinar cell hyperplasia and chronic pancreatitis can both cause grossly visible pancreatic nodules. Hyperplasia was not associated with neoplastic transformation. In addition, acinar cell adenoma was slightly more common than carcinoma, which is contrary to most reports of neoplasia in ferrets. Our findings also suggest that acute pancreatitis can be a sequela to pancreatic biopsy and that there may be an association between chronic pancreatitis and diabetes mellitus in ferrets. Finally, zinc toxicosis was found to be an unlikely cause of pancreatitis in these ferrets based on zinc tissue concentration testing in a subset of cases.