Temporal Artery Biopsy: Review of 36 Patients

Year 2019, Volume: 5 Issue: 3, 263 - 272, 01.09.2019

Özgür Altınbaş

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Aim: Temporal
arteritis is a systemic vasculitis that affects large and medium sized vessels.
Vasculitis signs have to be shown for accurate diagnosis; hence temporal artery
biopsy is still the gold standard for diagnosis. In this study, we evaluated
the patients in whom temporal artery biopsies were performed.

Material Methods:
In between September 2004 and June 2014, we peformed temporal artery biopsy in
36 patients, who had temporal arteritis complaints. Patients were
retrospectively evaluated for their clinical properties, performed procedures
and their results.

Results: Thirty-six
patients were enrolled into study, who were referred to our clinic for temporal
artery biopsy. Of these, 11 (30.5%) were male, 25 were female (69.5%) and mean
age was 61.1 (range between 56-81) years. Mean erythrocyte sedimentation rate
was 56.3 mm/hr (range between 51-130). In our study, 7 (19.4%) patients had
concordant findings which were representative of temporal arteritis. As a
complication, only one patient had ecchymosis on the right orbital region that
lasted in one week.

Conclusion:
Different results are published in the literature for positivity rates of
temporal artery biopsies. A number of different factors such as atypical
symptoms, skip lesions, suboptimal sampling and ongoing steroid treatment
affect the results. Temporal artery biopsy is an easily-performed and reliable
diagnostic method if only made after accurate clinical evaluation and if
adequate sampling was made in early period.

Keywords

Temporal artery biopsy, Temporal arteritis

References

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