title: Clinical features in patients with permanent visual loss due to biopsy-proven giant cell arteritis.
abstract: The objective was to determine associated clinical findings in patients with visual loss due to giant cell arteritis (GCA) by means of a record review of 146 patients with biopsy-proven GCA. Twenty-three (15.75%) patients had lost vision. All of these patients complained of classical GCA cranial symptoms for an average of 1.3 months, 34.8% had an apparent isolated polymyalgia rheumatica for an average of 10.8 months and 65.2% had premonitory visual symptoms before visual loss for an average of 8.5 days. A clear delay in diagnosis and treatment was present in 15 patients (65.2%) who complained of at least two classical cranial symptoms for longer than 3 weeks and/or who had presented premonitory visual symptoms for longer than 72 h before blindness. Two additional patients lost vision while receiving standard steroid therapy. In conclusion, a high proportion of patients with permanent visual loss have a delayed diagnosis and treatment. A wider recognition of the disease would potentially reduce the prevalence of irreversible visual loss among GCA patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital Clinic i Provincial, University of Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Font
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Cid
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Coll-Vinent
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: López-Soto
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Grau
mesh_terms: D001706:Biopsy; D001766:Blindness / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000209:etiology* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D013700:Giant Cell Arteritis / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D005938:Glucocorticoids / Q000627:therapeutic use; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008775:Methylprednisolone / Q000627:therapeutic use; D011111:Polymyalgia Rheumatica / Q000473:pathology; D011241:Prednisone / Q000627:therapeutic use; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013699:Temporal Arteries / Q000473:pathology*; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D005938:Glucocorticoids; D011241:Prednisone; D008775:Methylprednisolone