Objective: To evaluate the clinical and biological differences between medium sized vessel vasculitis and small vessel vasculitis.
Patients and methods: descriptive and retrospective study of 91 patients with vasculitis attended in our hospital from January 1991 to mars 2001. We describe the characteristics of clinical and analytic features.
Results: 57% were males. The mean age was 61.9 +/- 18.6 years (17 to 90 years). The symptoms and affected organs were: palpable purpura (89%), fever (36%), asthenia (20%), arthromyalgias (19%), nephropathy (18%), arthritis (16%), abdominal pain (16%), neuropathy (8.7%), pulmonary involvement (6.5%). 25% had several episodes, lasting clinical, chronic disease, 42% had evidence of two or more involve organs. The patients with pauci-inmune vasculitis presented more asthenia, nephritis, pulmonary involvement, multi-organic involvement and mortality related to the process. We did not found significant differences respect to the others clinical manifestations analysed.
Conclusions: There is a substantial overlap among different vasculitis, the presence or absence of some clinical and biological features can help in the differentiation and characterization of the different entitles.