Two patients with temporal arteritis who presented with pleural effusion are reported. Both had an exudate that responded to prednisolone treatment.

While superficial temporal artery (STA) vasculitis is typically a disease of the elderly, spontaneous STA aneurysm in children is anecdotic and usually caused by a subjacent vasculitis. Since 1948 around 40 cases have been listed in literature and just 6 of them under the age of 18. Three main forms have been classified: juvenile temporal arteritis, typical giant cells arteritis and temporal ar...

The prevalence of headache decreases with older age (Table 12-1) (1). Although 90% of headaches in younger patients are of the primary type, only 66% of those in the elderly are primary (2). There are numerous causes of new-onset headaches in those over 50 years of age (Table 12-2) (3). Although new-onset tension-type headaches are fairly common, migraine and clustertype headaches uncommonly be...

Giant cell arteritis (a.k.a., Horton’s temporal arteritis) belongs to the vasculitis group of diseases and affects the great vessels, especially branches of the carotid arteries in the head. Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) was formerly regarded as an independent disease. Nowadays, due to shared accumulations, it is also commonly assumed that these two diseases are caused by identical pathogeneses,...

There is a fairly common form of rheumatism which afflicts the elderly with pains in the head, neck, back, and proximal parts of the limbs, with stiffness of movement and with constitutional illness. It is associated with a raised sedimentation rate (E.S.R.) and a mild hypergammaglobulinaemia, and women are affected more frequently than men. There is as yet no specific test for this condition, ...

A patient with temporal arteritis developed a variety of ischaemic lesions in the eyes. Infarction of the inner retina and optic nerve head was delineated on presentation by white swelling in the retinal nerve fibre layer. The role of interrupted axoplasmic transport in the production of this sign is discussed. Outer retinal infarction was also noted on presentation and subsequently gave rise t...

Temporal (giant cell) arteritis is a systemic granulomatous vasculitis primarily involving branches of the carotid arteries in patients aged 50 years and greater. Its classic symptoms and signs are headache and elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), but this is not the only presentation. This case is the first reported in a Korean, whose chief complaint was pain in the tongue and headac...

The treatment of polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) and temporal arteritis (TA) is still controversial. To assess the influence on the course of these diseases of the clinical symptoms at initial presentation and of the starting dosage of corticosteroid (CS) treatment the data for 210 patients, who were diagnosed as having PMR or TA from 1976 to 1986 and were followed up closely, were reviewed. One h...

Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) was defined in 1957 and is linked with giant cell arteritis (GCA) in approximately 25% of cases. The peak incidence is between 60 and 75 years old and is increasing with the ageing population. Polymyalgia rheumatica is a clinical diagnosis without a 'gold standard' serological or histological test and there are other conditions that may mimic PMR. Treatment with a d...