Pulmonary Artery Involvement in Takayasu's Arteritis

Pulmonary Artery Involvement in Takayasu's Arteritis: a Retrospective Study in China

The purpose of this study is to analyze the clinical manifestations, imaging features, and prognosis-related factors of pulmonary artery (PA) involvement in Takayasu's arteritis (TA), and to explore the early clinical features of PA involvement in TA patients.

Takayasu's arteritis patients with pulmonary artery involvement were enrolled into this study. The demographic information of the patients (age, sex, course of disease), symptoms at their admissions (cough, hemoptysis, dyspnea, palpitations, fever), laboratory examinations (blood lab routines, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein), and imaging examinations (vascular ultrasonography, computed tomographic angiography, echocardiography, chest CT, CTPA, pulmonary perfusion imaging, pulmonary angiography, PET/CT) were collected by reviewing the cases. The prognostic information was collected by telephone follow-up. The follow-up end point was December 2015.

Inclusion Criteria:

• 1.Meet the diagnostic criteria of TA as defined by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR).
• 2.PA involvement: meet at least one of three items: (1) at least one of computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CTPA), pulmonary perfusion imaging, or pulmonary arteriography suggests thickening of vessel wall, stenosis, aneurysm, or occlusion; (2) 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) suggests high intake of local radioactive material in pulmonary artery wall; (3) pulmonary artery systolic blood pressure is higher than 50 mmHg assessed by transthoracic echocardiography (defined as PAH), without left ventricular disease.

Exclusion Criteria:

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