[Rheumatoid purpura in adults]

Generalized vasculitis of unknown pathogeny, involving skin, joints, kidneys and gut in various combinations. Rheumatoid purpura (RP) is rare in adults. Clinical spectrum is more severe than in children, but the outcome is favorable in the majority of patients. RP has an unpredictable nature, but poor prognosis is bound, early, to gastrointestinal complications, specially in old patients, and secondarily to evolution of glomerular lesions. Intensive therapy (plasma exchanges) should be indicated only in severe extra renal complications, and when renal biopsy shows crescents present in more 50 p. 100 of the glomeruli.