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© Dirk Biddle
Primary vasculitides are rare conditions and perhaps as a consequence prevalence data for many are inconsistent, varying from country to country, study to study, and by gender and race. Further, recently suspected increases in the incidences of some primary vasculitis conditions are speculated to be a manifestation of a growing community awareness. However some data do exist. For example, one US study concluded that “the combined prevalence is over 30/100,000 population. About 100,000 Americans per year are hospitalized for care of vasculitis. Children and adults, males and females, and individuals of any ethnic background may be affected. Whereas these numbers are relatively small, compared to heart disease or cancer, the impact of vasculitis is substantial. Systemic vasculitis is often life threatening and likely to produce disability or death. For example, in the case of Wegener’s granulomatosis, approximately 1500 patients are hospitalized for this illness in the US every year. Eleven percent die in the course of hospitalization, 31% become totally disabled in performing their usual occupation and 20% become partially disabled over 5 years from the time of disease onset. Between loss of personal income and hospitalizations, Wegener’s granulomatosis alone costs our health care system and patients over $40 million per year. This figure does not take into account the loss of income that results from an 11% mortality rate among hospitalized patients with this illness (Hoffman GS et al. Arthritis and Rheumatism. 41:1998; Cotch et al.: Arthritis Rheumatism. 39:1996)” (1). Another study revealed: “A rough estimate of expenditures for vasculitis-related hospitalizations for polyarteritis nodosa, hypersensitivity vasculitis, Wegener's granulomatosis, giant cell arteritis and Takayasu's arteritis in the US amounted to $150 million per year” (2).
Prevalence data for individual vasculitis conditions will be explored later in this article where the individual vasculitides are described in detail. However, the least common primary vasculitis is CNS vasculitis, where only a few hundred cases have been described in the literature worldwide, and the most common primary vasculitis is possibly polymyalgia rheumatica, occurring in a substantial percentage of older people.
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1. http://www2.ccf.org/inssys/Vasculitis.htm
2. Cotch M. (2000) The socioeconomic impact of vasculitis. Current Opinion in Rheumatology, 12(1), 20-23.
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