The following are the most important diseases or complications that may be contributed to by giant cell arteritis:
Cardiovascular system (I00-I99).
- Aortic aneurysm (bulging of the aorta) – occurs in 20-30% of cases during the course of the disease; thoracic aortic aneurysms occur 17 times more frequently in RZA patients!
- Aortic dissection (synonym: aneurysm dissecans aortae) – acute splitting (dissection) of the wall layers of the aorta (aorta), with a tear of the inner layer of the vessel wall (intima) and a hemorrhage between the intima and the muscle layer of the vessel wall (outer media), in terms of an aneurysm dissecans (pathological expansion of the artery).
- Apoplexy (stroke) – occurs in 3-7% of those affected.
- Vascular stenosis (vasoconstriction) of the vessels coming off the aorta.
- Ischemic insults (stroke as a result of reduced blood flow (ischemia)) of the brainstem/brainstem infarction with involvement of the vertebral artery (vertebral artery) (rare)
- Myocardial infarction (heart attack).
- Venous thromboembolism (VTE) – occlusion of a blood vessel by a detached blood clot; e.g., deep vein thrombosis.
Mouth, esophagus (food pipe), stomach, and intestines (K00-K67; K90-K93).
Psyche – nervous system (F00-F99; G00-G99)
- Polyneuropathy – occurs in circa one quarter of those affected.
Consequential diseases of arteritis temporalis.
Eyes and eye appendages (H00-H59).
- Blindness – often due to anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (AION; acute circulatory disturbance of the optic nerve head; imprecisely and colloquially also: “ocular infarction”); symptoms: sudden and painless loss of vision and/or visual field loss; precursor is amaurosis fugax (fleeting blindness) Cave! Ocular involvement occurs in 70% of patients with RZA. If left untreated, up to approximately 60% of patients may experience blindness of the second eye within 1-14 days.50% of patients experience visual loss (loss of vision).
