Systemic uptake of chlorpromazine after delivery via retrobulbar injection.

Abstract

These data hint that arteritis may be more prevalent in the frontal branch than the parietal branch. Notably, in the majority of patients who had imaging signs of temporal arteritis, abnormalities were present in one branch but not the other, at least on one side. Although neuroimaging is not equivalent to the gold standard of histopathological analysis, this result suggests that selective involvement of a single branch of the superficial temporal artery is not rare. Bilateral temporal artery biopsy is sometimes performed to improve the chance of obtaining a positive result, especially if systemic symptoms are present. However, only a handful of patients will have a negative biopsy finding on one side and a positive biopsy finding on the other side. If a second biopsy is contemplated, it may be more fruitful to sample the other branch of the artery on the same side rather than the same branch on the other side. In the future, surgeons should record whether they have biopsied the frontal or parietal branch so that data can be gathered to determine which branch is inflamed most frequently. This information may increase the diagnostic yield of temporal artery biopsy. Author Affiliations: Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medicine, Dankook University, Cheonan, South Korea (Dr Kyung); Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston (Dr Yoon); and Departments of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology, University of California, San Francisco (Drs Crawford and Horton). Correspondence: Dr Horton, Beckman Vision Center, University of California, San Francisco, 10 Koret Way, San Francisco, CA 94143 (hortonj@vision.ucsf.edu). Financial Disclosure: None reported. Funding/Support: This work was supported by grants EY10217 (Dr Horton) and EY02162 (Beckman Vision Center) from the National Eye Institute and by Research to Prevent Blindness.