Is It Always Better to Get Faster Results in Temporal Artery Biopsies?

Diagnosis and treatment of giant cell arteritis (GCA) have evolved throughout the years. Before the 1990s, the diagnosis relied entirely on temporal artery biopsy (TAB) –proven disease to start the eyesight-saving steroid treatment. Pathologists used to do frozen sections to rapidly render a diagnosis that would inform the decision of whether or not to have the patient start corticosteroid treatment. This sounds like an ideal practice for patient care, so why hav e we stopped favoring this approach? Primarily, it is because we have reached a better understanding of GCA physiopathology, which has balanced the accuracy vs speed of diagnosis.
Source: JAMA Ophthalmology - Category: Opthalmology Source Type: research