Chest
Volume 91, Issue 6, June 1987, Pages 924-925
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Selected Reports
Pulmonary Artery Obstruction due to Giant Cell Arteritis

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Giant cell arteritis is often referred to in the context of polymyalgia rheumatica with temoral artery involvement. There are, however, more malignant forms of presentation of this necrotizing arteritis involving either the great vessels of the aorta or, occasionally, the pulmonary arteries. Our case relates to giant cell arteritis presenting as pulmonary artery obstruction in a patient without polymyalgia rheumatica or extensive aortic or proximal great vessel involvement.

Section snippets

CASE REPORT

A 77-year-old Caucasian woman was admitted for evaluation of progressive dyspnea, fatigue, weakness and right-sided chest pain without fever over approximately six months, with no history of chronic headaches or muscle pain to suggest polymyalgia rheumatica. Physical examination disclosed an elderly woman in no acute distress, blood pressure 90/60 mm Hg, pulse 110 bpm and regular, mild jugular vein distention to 12 ml water, a two-over-six systolic ejection murmur at the lower left sternal

DISCUSSION

Giant cell arteritis is an idiopathic inflammatory process involving the large and medium-sized arteries. Involvement of the pulmonary artery has been reported,6 but pulmonary artery obstruction due to giant cell arteritis has not been previously described.

Symptoms occurred late in our patient and thromboembolism was most likely due to severely-reduced pulmonary blood flow. Our case is somewhat unusual in that extensive involvement of the pulmonary arteries without extensive aortic involvement

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Our thanks to Caron Patnode for typing this manuscript.

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    Aortic arch arteritis in the elderly: an important manifestation of giant cell arteritis

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There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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