Age of diagnosis

Doctors have been known to be wrong MANY times! Sometimes we need to educate our doctors

I was diagnosed with GCA at the age of 56 and PMR 6 months later, although I had been quite ill for ay least 6 months before I saw a specialist, as my GP was convinced it was a viral infection even though my ESR was 80. All the best, lindy

hello,

I am 55 and at 53 I was diagnosed with GCA- the doctor was not sure initially if it was GCA or Takayasu's  arteritis. This form of vasculitis affects the larger arteries in the body, including the aorta. It typically occurs in young women. Signs and symptoms include a feeling of numbness or cold in the limbs, loss of pulse, high blood pressure, headaches, and visual changes. I was too old and too young. After the temporal artery biopsi, GCA became the diagnosis. When I went to my Opthalmologist and told him my diagnosis he said I did not, I was too young, and sorta argued with me, questioning how I came up with that diagnosis. He was astonished and said he had just recently been on a webinar about this disease and the take away for the doctors is that you dont have to look at young women for this because it only occurs after 70-. I know that your questions was about being diagnosed with  PMR but PMR and GCA are  closely related and often times if you have one you have the other.

I am not surprised, and I would definitely look at getting a second opinion. I went to 4 different doctors and it took 4 months before I was diagnosed and ended up in the hopsital for a week-

Hope this helps and keep us posted on your well being. 

i) Evaluate for inclusion criteria

Core (essential):

. Age >50 years, duration >2 weeks

. Bilateral shoulder or pelvic girdle aching, or both

. Morning stiffness duration of >45 min

. Evidence of an acute-phase response (e.g. raised

ESR, CRP)

Extract from the BSR Guidelines on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Polymyalgia Rheumatica, issued this year by the British Society of Rheumatologists.    You can find the whole of the guidelines on pmr gca uk north east website, the NHS website and the BSR website.

Suggest you download and take them to the specialist you saw and ask them to read up on PMR. 

Patient Representatives on the guideline committee worked very hard to prove the case for people below the age of 65, never mind 60.

Statistics are done on bell curve, the average being the top of the curve, people fall down on either side, four or five people I know of with PMR are in their late 20's to below fifty.   When everything else has been tested and showed zilch, then a dose of pred for one week - sharp tells them you have PMR regardless of age  - if there is rapid improvement in a very short time  - its PMR.

I was diagnosed at age 67, had been acutely suffering for over a year, so 65 at onset.  However after all the reading I've done, and looking back over the years before this acute phase I definitely had something going on for many years.  I'd always put it down to osteoarthritis, diagnosed at age 40, but interestingly since pred I have NONE of the pains I'd thought were osteoarthritis.  There are osteo symptoms from time to time, but they are not like the generalized aches I'd had before.  A classic symptom is "morning stiffness" which when I read that I thought was odd, how, I wondered, could this be a diagnostic symptom, because I was always stiff when I first got up.  And, since pred, even at a low dose, this is no longer an issue for me.  So, who knows?  Was it PMR or another as yet undiagnosed inflammatory disease which also responded magically to pred? 

I also suffer from jaw pain and temple pain and have been checked twice now for gca.

I would ask for a second opinion if your not happy.

My diagnosis was on a second opinion visit xx