Giant-cell Arteritis, or Arteritis of the Aged

Abstract

Giant-cell arteritis, once believed to run a benign course, kills or maims a number of those afflicted, and when in remission it may only sleep. We hope for wider recognition of this common disorder, which is treatable for the most part, but if untreated may progress slowly with pain, palsy, blindness, deafness, and madness in its train, or sometimes more rapidly to a fatal termination. Diagnostic failure is due to many diverse presentations, some of which are little known, and to continued acceptance of a too rigid profile of the disease, despite the fact that the literature is replete with clinical and pathological evidence of its systemic nature. It must be emphasized that classical involvement of the tem poral arteries may appear late, transiently, or possibly not at all during the period of observation ; it is only one incident of a disorder phased in time and widespread in its distribution.