Pathologische Anatomie der arteriellen Verschlußkrankheiten. In: Thauer R, Pleschka K, editors. Das Arterielle System. Heidelberg: Steinkopff; 1974. pp. 74-94. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-85290-9_6]

Giant cell arteritis (cranial arteritis, polymyalgia rheumatica)

Giant cell arteritis, which is probably due to disturbed immune mechanisms, has a spectrum of clinical symptoms in elderly people. In nearly all cases such general signs as loss of appetite, loss of weight and fever are present. The sedimentation rate is almost without exception about 100 mm in the first hour. The two most frequent and typical clinical syndromes are polymyalgia rheumatica and cranial arteritis. The polymyalgia rheumatica is characterized by periarticular pain which is mostly symmetrical and accentuated in the shoulder girdle. Increasingly severe temporal headache and ocular distrubances are found with cranial arteritis in more than 50% of cases. A combination of both diseases is frequent. Other arterial branches are rarely involved. The course of the disease is over a period of 1 1/2 to 2 years. Treatment with corticosteroids is indicated mainly because of the severe ocular complications with blindness. It should begin immediately, be intensive and last over a long period. Regular followup is necessary over several years in order to avoid relapses.

[Arteriosclerosis: morbid anatomy (author's transl)]

Pathology is a variant of physiology with obstacles. No arterial wall is absolutely impermeable. The basic form of arteriosclerosis results from a disturbance of the lifelong flow of humors ab intima in adventitiam et ex centro in peripheriam (author's "Perfusion theory"). Special forms develop from this basic form. Analysis of postmortem material with special reference to the so-called risk factors allowed us to establish connections between some of these factors and arteriosclerosis, while some other connections, e.g. with smoking, were called in question. It is pointed out that prospective treatment of arteriosclerosis will begin only when the cluster of risk factors can be broken down.