**4. Treatment**

### **4.1 Corticosteroids**

Initiation of prompt corticosteroid treatment is recommended [1–5]. In cases where there is a clinical suspicion of giant cell arteritis, corticosteroid treatment should be initiated immediately and not delayed awaiting results of blood tests or temporal artery biopsy.

In cases of complicated giant cell arteritis, that is when there is evolving visual loss or amaurosis fugax: Intravenous methylprednisolone in a dosage of 500 mg–1 g IV for three days followed by corticosteroid dose is advised.

A corticosteroid tapering regimen is suggested below [18]:


Corticosteroids can generally be reduced when the clinical features of active disease are absent and when the laboratory markers for acute inflammation such as ESR, C-reactive protein are normalized.

### **4.2 Aspirin**

The usage of Aspirin is controversial; albeit it remains in the recommendations [18], when not contraindicated. Aspirin has been found to be protective against

cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events in previous studies [19]. Apart from its antiplatelet effects and Aspirin also has disease-modifying effects through suppression of interferon (IFN) gamma [18, 19].
