Temporal Arteritis: Improving Patient Evaluation with a New Protocol

Adding specialist clinical evaluation and color duplex ultrasonography to the standard diagnostic workup for temporal arteritis creates a rapid, noninvasive, resource-sensible means to diagnose giant cell arteritis, to improve temporal artery biopsy yield, and to decrease the total number of biopsies done. The diagnosis can be made in some cases by clinical evaluation and color duplex ultrasonography alone, thereby saving the patient an unnecessary surgical procedure. Protocols such as this can be implemented by multidisciplinary cooperation in a patient-centered, integrated system.