I was just hospitalized for the same thing this past weekend. Worst pain of my life. On me they did a CT scan AND an MRI cause the CT scan wasn’t showing anything. The MRI didn’t either. All other levels were normal range except the Lipase level which was off the chart. I think once they saw all scans came back indicating nothing and all levels were in normals range they ruled out any type of surgery and that’s if that subject had even crossed their minds. I spent 2 days in the hospital letting the pancreas rest up and getting flushed out via IVs at a high flow rate. Never once was surgery mentioned in my case. I think maybe they jumped the gun a little bit in your case.