The ultimate diagnoses of patients undergoing temporal artery biopsies

Patients with signs and symptoms of giant cell arteritis may have normal temporal artery biopsy specimens. To study the relationships between signs and symptoms of this disease and the ultimate clinical diagnosis, we reviewed 51 patients who had undergone temporal artery biopsy. The mean age of the patients with abnormal biopsy specimens was higher than that of patients with normal biopsy specimens. We found headache, fever, and jaw claudication were useful symptoms in predicting abnormal biopsy specimens. The ultimate diagnoses of patients with normal biopsy specimens and no response to treatment showed high incidence of malignant neoplasms and diabetes mellitus.