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Query: UMLS:C0039483 (giant cell arteritis)
 3,204 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A retrospective study was made of 96 patients diagnosed as cranial arteritis of whom 32 were accepted using strict clinical criteria or a positive temporal artery biopsy. Unusual presentations of fever, psychiatric illness, headache-free patients and a 'normal' ESR are described. The recognition of these variations is important in the early diagnosis of temporal arteritis.
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PMID:Unusual variants in the presentation of temporal arteritis. 739 2

The purposes of this article are to report a case with temporal arteritis (TA) and to summarize and reanalyze the cases of temporal arteritis associated with fever in published articles for understanding better the clinical features of TA. A case with biopsy-proven TA is reported. The publications with TA and fever were searched by using MEDLINE in English from 1966 to 1999. Three hundred sixty cases of temporal arteritis associated with fever were reanalyzed. The results showed that a case of biopsy-proven TA with typically clinical manifestation was initially misdiagnosed and that the reanalysis of 360 cases revealed that the common clinical findings at presentation were abnormal temporal arteries, headache, low fever, loss of weight, polymyalgia rheumatica, jaw claudication, vision disorder, arthralgis or myalyias, and ear pain and that the uncommon clinical findings at presentation were high fever, malaise, anorexia, breast pain, transient ischemic attack/stroke, cough, mental disorder, diarrhea, and uterine prolapse, etc. Laboratory findings were the range of erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) 14 to 149 with a mean of 97.0 mm/hr, white blood cells being normal or increased in the range of 10.9 to 22.9 x 10(9)/L, hemoglobin level 7 to 16 g/dL, the platelets count increased to 785 x 10(9)/L, and microscopic hematuria. The diagnosis was made by a combination of clinical features, an increased ESR, a response to steroids, and, most specifically, temporal artery biopsy. The initial diagnosis was misdiagnosed in 38.2% of patients. In conclusion, the features of TA associated with fever have not been widely appreciated yet. TA is a common cause of fever of unknown origin (FUO) in the elderly. TA should be considered when patients complain of common and uncommon manifestations. An elevated ESR will aid in the diagnosis of TA, and temporal artery biopsy will provide certainty.
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PMID:Temporal arteritis and fever: report of a case and a clinical reanalysis of 360 cases. 1110 64