Giant cell arteritis may lead to catastrophic, large-vessel complications from chronic vascular wall inflammation without prompt diagnosis and treatment. We describe a rare case of acute aortic dissection without preceding aneurysm secondary to histologically confirmed giant cell arteritis (GCA) in an 85-year-old female with a four-year history of polymyalgia rheumatica and temporal arteritis d...

OBJECTIVE As one of the diagnostic criteria for giant cell arteritis affecting the temporal arteries (temporal arteritis) is still biopsy-proven vasculitis of the affected artery, the aim of our study was to evaluate the value of a non-invasive procedure, 2-(18)F-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (F-18-FDG-PET), in the diagnosis of Horton's disease. METHODS During a ...

Takayasu arteritis is a large-vessel vasculitis that often results in pulselessness due to fibrotic stenoses. Whereas minor calcification is sometimes seen with Takayasu arteritis, it rarely causes stenosis. Extensive calcification resulting in malperfusion is exceedingly rare and has been attributed to disorders in calcium trafficking in a chronic inflammatory state. We report an unusual case ...

Giant cell arteritis (temporal arteritis) is a chronic vasculitis that usually affects older people. Although this is a systemic disease, it most often affects the cranial arteries. The most frequent complication of this disorder is visual loss. We report the case of a patient who suffered several rare complications, including tongue necrosis, as a result of being diagnosed with giant cell arte...

In the investigation of six patients with giant cell arteritis and abnormal liver function radionuclide liver scans were found to be abnormal in all. The abnormality may be due to arteritis of hepatic vessels. It is important to recognise that giant cell arteritis may cause liver scan abnormalities. If other pathology is suspected and corticosteroid treatment delayed while further investigation...

Temporal arteritis is most common vasculitis in elderly and imitated by miscellaneous disorders. Temporal artery biopsy is the gold standard test in the diagnosis of giant cell arteritis (GCA). Hereby, we describe a case of a 67-year-old man who presented initially with temporal arteritis; however, a lip biopsy then revealed AL amyloidosis. In this respect, temporal artery biopsy should be perf...

Takayasu arteritis is a chronic vasculitis of unknown origin. Its incidence is low in the United States and Europe (1 to 3 new cases per year per million population) (9,17,28). Sporadically, association between Takayasu arteritis and inflammatory bowel disease has been described, both in Crohn’s disease (5-7, 13, 15,17,19,23,29,31,32,38,40,41,43,50,52,54) and ulcerative colitis (1,3,4,8,14,22,2...

Patients with Takayasu arteritis often present with reduced vision related either to the disease per se or due to complications of therapy. We report a patient with Takayasu arteritis who developed acute onset bilateral visual loss 6wks following percutaneous revascularization of occluded aortic arch branches. No ocular cause for the visual loss was evident. The reason for visual loss in this p...

first Remmitting Seronegative Symmetrical Synovitis with Pitting Edema (RS3PE) syndrome which is characterized by symmetrical distal synovitis, tenosynovitis of the mucous sheaths of the flexor and extensor tendons of the hands, pitting edema of the hands and/or feet, seronegativity for the Rheumatoid Factor (RF) and benign prognosis, mainly affecting the elderly and the males, exquisite respon...