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JAMA Diagnostic Test Interpretation
March 19, 2019

Evaluating the Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Infectious Diseases, the University of Vermont Medical Center, Burlington
  • 2Department of Medicine, Larner College of Medicine, the University of Vermont, Burlington
  • 3Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
JAMA. 2019;321(14):1404-1405. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.1178

A healthy 65-year-old woman presented with 2 days of sustained throbbing, bilateral temporal headache and bilateral blurred vision. Laboratory results are shown in the Table. Given her erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) of 110 mm/h and symptoms concerning for giant cell arteritis (GCA), a temporal artery biopsy was obtained. Results showed a normal caliber lumen without infiltrating inflammatory cells.

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