Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a systemic autoimmune disease that affects medium- and large-sized arteries. The diagnostic gold standard is the temporal artery biopsy, but it has limited sensitivity and some difficulties in reproducibility. Color duplex ultrasonography is a noninvasive, reproducible, and inexpensive method for diagnosis of temporal arteries involvement (temporal arteritis [TA]) ...

Manifestations and �onsequences The symptoms of temporal arteritis are highly variable. The occurrence of frequent (e.g., daily) temporal or occipital headaches that are resistant to regular analgesics is the most common symptom, found in two-thirds of patients.6 Fever, present in 50% of cases, is usually moderate.6 Anorexia with weight loss and asthenia is observed in one-third of patients.6 I...

OBJECTIVE To determine the incidence of temporal arteritis (TA) in patients with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) using colour Doppler ultrasonography of the temporal arteries. METHODS Ultrasonography was performed in all 127 consecutive patients with newly diagnosed, active PMR seen between 1994 and 2000 and in 127 age- and sex-matched controls. RESULTS Of 102 patients with "pure" PMR, 8% had ...

We retrospectively compared 81 temporal artery biopsy specimens demonstrating perivascular inflammation without evidence of temporal arteritis and 76 specimens demonstrating no inflammation. Patients with perivascular inflammation included 43 women (mean age, 71.2 years). Nineteen patients met the 1990 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria for the diagnosis of temporal arteritis. All ...

These data hint that arteritis may be more prevalent in the frontal branch than the parietal branch. Notably, in the majority of patients who had imaging signs of temporal arteritis, abnormalities were present in one branch but not the other, at least on one side. Although neuroimaging is not equivalent to the gold standard of histopathological analysis, this result suggests that selective invo...

The first case of what is now known as temporal, cranial, or giant-cell arteritis was published in 1890 by Jonathan Hutchinson. He described how the 80-year-old father of a London Hospital bedle came to him complaining that he could not put his hat on because of painful swellings in his temples. These proved to be red, inflamed, swollen temporal arteries which subsequently lost their pulsations...