[Treatment of Horton's disease]

716 cases collected from 9 recent studies published between 1981 and 1985 served as a basis for a general review of the current treatment of temporal arteritis. Steroid therapy was instituted as first intention in 652 cases, high dose treatment was continued for between 8 days and 3 months but the majority of authors started a reduction in the dosage from the 4th or 5th week. There was no overall agreement regarding the duration of maintenance therapy nor the criteria allowing its discontinuation, and withdrawal was not possible before the 25th month on average. The ideal initial dosage, in the absence of randomized studies, remains to be defined: generally around 0.5 mg/kg/d in milder forms, the dosage may be increased to 1 mg/kg/d in the presence of complicated temporal arteritis. Besides cortico steroid therapy, other treatments are successively envisaged: synthetic anti-malarials (SAM), non steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAI), dapsone... while these are generally used as back-up treatment, David-Chausse used SAM as first intention, combined in 17 cases with NSAI in 61 of his 66 patients, with very promising results which require confirmation in other studies. In this review the cure rate was around 25% and the relapse rate 38%; complications related to the disease occurred in 19%, while almost one patient in two--47%--developed iatrogenic complications. Blindness dominates the prognosis, and occurred in 15% of cases, most often as an inaugural event, it very rarely regressed on steroid treatment. Although death occurred in 18% of cases, the prognosis of temporal arteritis generally remains favorable, with a 5 year survival curve identical to a control population.