Giant Cell Arteritis

After experiencing painful headaches, hair falling out, deeply disturbing potential loss of vision and hearing, patients are aggressively railroaded into temporal artery biopsies, often on both sides of the head. This extremely invasive surgery, at a time of inflammation of these delicate arteries, to cut through and micro-suture, with often delayed wound healing, is outrageous when non invasive scans are available, especially as the result does not matter, as a negative does not mean that GCA is not present and the treatment is the same as a positive test for giant cells. This operation is very expensive and dangerous. Wound healing is often a problem when other means of diagnosis are available.

 

People in care homes are not being diagnosed, losing sight and hearing, and this is put down to a CVA. This is a far more common genetic illness than statistics show. Patients are told they have temporal arteritis when inflammation within other large and medium blood vessels are totally ignored. Patients who are refusing the temporal artery biopsy are not receiving a GCA diagnosis and are being sidelined by the medical profession. Usually male doctors are specialising in this largely female interest area of medicine. Mostly they are rheumatologists who are not interested in GCA and see patients as a default. It is impossible to get treatment from an immunologist. Many of the men from Asia when this is a Scandinavian auto immune gene.

 

There has been no reports in any medical publication of Astra Zenica Covid vaccination that can affect the cranial artery. This should be contraindicated in GCA which can affect the cranial artery. Why are patients with affected blood vessels not being prioritised when we know that Covid is not just a respiratory illness but a blood vessel infection. Vaccinations should also be monitored as many describe GCA developing after the Tamiflu vaccination.

 

Polymyalgia Rheumatica is often present also with GCA. This is nothing to do with rheumatics. Ask what is causing the joint and muscle pain and weakness and doctors are dismissive rather than saying that the blood vessels are not supplying sufficient blood through the blood vessels.