rss
Br J Ophthalmol 2004;88:1595-1596
  • Letter

The use of magnetic resonance imaging in the diagnosis of suspected giant cell arteritis

  1. S O Brannan1,
  2. D Cheung1,
  3. P I Murray1,
  4. C Dewar2,
  5. P Guest3
  1. 1Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre, Dudley Road, Birmingham B18 7QU, UK
  2. 2Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, City Hospital, Birmingham, UK
  3. 3Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham, NHS Trust, Birmingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to: Professor P I Murray Academic Unit of Ophthalmology, Division of Immunity and Infection, Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre, Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, City Hospital, Dudley Road, Birmingham B18 7QU, UK; P.I.Murraybham.ac.uk
  • Accepted 3 March 2003

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a vasculitis of unknown origin that has a predisposition for the cranial arteries in the elderly. It has potentially devastating visually complications and produces a broad range of symptoms and signs that mimic many other medical and surgical conditions. Blood tests reflect the underlying inflammatory process, yet the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) may be normal in 8% of patients with biopsy proved GCA.1 Nevertheless, making a definitive diagnosis has importance therapeutically as patients are committed to a lengthy oral corticosteroid regimen. Non-invasive techniques, such as colour Doppler or duplex ultrasonography, have been studied in an attempt to improve patient preselection for temporal artery biopsy (TAB).2,3 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has …

[Full text of this article]

Responses to this article

  • MRI has great potential to assist in diagnosis of giant cell arteritis
    • Thorsten A. Bley,
    • Markus Uhl, Michael Markl, and Oliver Wieben
    Br J Ophthalmol published online September 14, 2009

This Article

  1. Extract
  2. Full text
  3. PDF

Register for free content

The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.