How does the disease develop temporal arteritis and its symptoms?

1 Symptoms of pathology

Disease most often occurs in people aged 60 to 80 years. The disease is characterized by the following symptoms:

1. The patient has thinning of the skin on the scalp.
2. There is a restriction, and sometimes a complete disability, of the motor abilities of the lower jaw. The patient complains of soreness when chewing or even talking.
3. At the initial stage, a person has pain in the muscles. Especially the shoulders suffer. In this case the pain is sharply increased in the morning hours or after physical stress.
4. The disease can cause fever in the patient.
5. Symptoms of asthenia appear.
6. There is a rapid loss of body weight.

A characteristic feature of the disease is the thickening of the temporal arteries that run near the surface. At the same time, they can not be squeezed by fingers even with the use of force. If the disease is not treated, then it will begin to progress rapidly, which is manifested in the disappearance of pulsations on the arteries of the temples. With further development of the disease, gangrene develops on the skin of the patient's head.

2 Eye damage in case of an illness

For the described disease, the occurrence of so-called anterior ischemic neuropathy is characteristic. In this condition, there is a disruption of blood plasma circulation in the arteries and blood vessels that nourish the optic nerves. Blood supply is disturbed directly next to the eyeball. As a result, a sharp deterioration of vision is observed in a person. In this case, the ability to peripheral vision is affected, since separate areas begin to fall out of the field of vision. As shown by medical practice and the study of such patients, the above lesions are observed in 30% of patients with giant cell( temporal) arteritis on both optic nerves at once, which leads to bilateral deterioration of vision at once in both eyes.

But there are other types of damage to the organs of vision in this disease. Relatively rare are such phenomena as:

1. The patient has a sharp, almost sudden deterioration in the level of vision, which can result in the development of complete blindness. This process appears because of a violation of the circulation of blood plasma in the arteries and blood vessels that feed blood to the retina of the eye. The phenomenon is called the occlusion of the central artery of the retina.
2. Reduction in visual acuity can occur in a person with giant cell arteritis on the temples with blood circulation disorders in individual branches of the central blood vessels of the retina. At the same time, individual parts fall into the field of view of the patient along with a decrease in the level of vision. This occurs in those areas where the branches of blood vessels that supply blood to one or another section of the retina are damaged.
3. Some patients develop nerve palsy, which is responsible for eye movement. In this case, the ability of the eyeball to move left, right, up or down can completely disappear. In such cases, most people with giant cell arteritis on the temples have a double vision in their eyes.
4. Another part of patients with this disease is characterized by the development of eye ischemic syndrome, which arises from the deterioration of blood supply to the eye in the defeat of arteries and vessels.

In all of the above cases, there are symptoms such as retinal edema, hemorrhages in it, increased pressure in the patient's eyes inside the eye, the development of cataracts. As studies show, in 1/5 of all cases of detection of giant cell arteritis symptoms, the general symptoms of the disease may not appear in the eyes. From this it follows that when diagnosing a patient who is more than 50 years old, the age-specific eye diseases should be excluded from the artery as the main cause of their defeat.

3 Diagnostic procedure

For the correct diagnosis, a biochemical and general analysis of the blood plasma is carried out. Thus it is necessary to pay attention to the sedimentation rate of erythrocytes of ESR and increase in the level of C-reactive proteins. These tests show disturbances in the immune system of the patient.

If a temporal arteritis is suspected, then an artery biopsy should be performed at the patient's temples. This is done by removing a part of the temporal artery up to 2.5 cm in length. This material is then studied by producing the finest sections and then examining them under a microscope. If an eye injury in a person is detected, a biopsy is performed on the arteries and vessels of the organs of vision.

4 How to cure the disease

For the treatment of patients with giant cell arteritis at the temples doctors should block the wrong actions of the immune system, which damages the cellular structures of their body. To do this, the patient is prescribed medication from the group of glucocorticosteroids.

If it is necessary to treat vascular damage before your eyes, then vasodilator medicines, special medicines to improve blood circulation, means to strengthen the walls of the affected vessels, medications that reduce the risk of a thrombus.