SYNOPSIS‐ABSTRACT
THE PHYSICIAN should beware of headache in the senior citizen. It may forebode, among many things, the insidious onset of temporal arteritis, a disease that can be easily overlooked in its early stages. Temporal arteritis occurs exclusively in older persons. The average age of the first 105 patients carefully studied at the Mayo Clinic was 69.1 years. Danger lurking behind the headache of temporal arteritis is of far greater magnitude than that in any other type of headache. Loss of vision can occur at any time during the course of the illness, and has occurred in a high percentage of cases. Loss of vision, if it occurs, is always permanent. A high degree of suspicion on the part of the physician will lead to an early diagnosis, and thus, if treatment is promptly instituted, to the prevention of blindness. To the medical profession, the real challenge of temporal arteritis is to fide the patient through the illness without the loss of vision.
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