[Signs of hypercoagulation and activation of fibrinolysis in patients with Wegeners's granulomatosis and Schoenlein-Genoch's purpura].

The patients with Wegener's granulomatosis and Schoenlein-Genoch's purpura included in this study were examined in the E.A.M.

[Experience with rituximab treatment (monoclonal antibodies to B-lymphocyte CD20 receptors) of Wegener's granulomatosis patients with renal impairment].

Aim: To assess efficacy of rituximab in patients suffering from Wegener's granulematosis (WG) with renal disease.

Material And Methods: We analysed clinical laboratory data from 9 WG patients with renal disease treated with rituximab in E.M.

[Pulmonary lesions in Wegener's granulomatosis].

Pulmonary lesions are the commonest and prognostically unfavourable visceral pathology in Wegener's granulomatosis. The author discusses clinically and reongenologically detectable lesions associated with this systemic vasculitis with special reference to its most severe forms (alveolar bleeding and infectious complications frequently caused by active immunosuppressive therapy). Diagnostic (including early) and modem therapeutic modalities of Wegener's granulomatosis are considered.

[Severe Wegener's granulomatosis successfully treated with rituximab].

The paper discusses the problems of the diagnosis and treatment of Wegener's granulomatosis, the most common anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated systemic vasculitis. It describes a clinical case in which the administration of rituximab could achieve remission of severe Wegener's granulomatosis in a young man having numerous adverse reactions associated with the long-term use of high- and average-dose glucocorticoids and nonselective immunosuppressive agents. A place of rituximab in current drug therapy for Wegener's granulomatosis is shown.

[Takayasu syndrome in Horton's disease].

Problems of diagnosis (including early diagnoses) and treatment of giant cell arteritis the commonest form of vasculitis in subjects above 50 years. An aged woman presenting with rheumatic polymyalgia is described in whom cell arteritis was diagnosed by positron emission tomography. Etiology of this disease and it medicamentous treatment are discussed with reference to the patients' age and concomitant pathologies.