Signs and Symptoms
Initial signs are extremely variable, and diagnosis can be severely delayed due to the nonspecific nature of the symptoms. Rhinitis is generally the first sign in most patients.
- Kidney: rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis (75%), leading to chronic renal failure
- Upper airway, eye and ear disease:
- Nose: pain, stuffiness, nosebleeds, rhinitis, crusting, saddle-nose deformity due to a perforated septum
- Ears: conductive hearing loss due to auditory tube dysfunction, sensorineural hearing loss (unclear mechanism)
- Oral cavity: strawberry gingivitis, underlying bone destruction with loosening of teeth, non-specific ulcerations throughout oral mucosa
- Eyes: pseudotumours, scleritis, conjunctivitis, uveitis, episcleritis
- Trachea: subglottal stenosis
- Lungs: pulmonary nodules (referred to as "coin lesions"), infiltrates (often interpreted as pneumonia), cavitary lesions, pulmonary hemorrhage causing hemoptysis, and rarely bronchial stenosis.
- Arthritis: Pain or swelling (60%), often initially diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis
- Skin: nodules on the elbow, purpura, various others (see cutaneous vasculitis)
- Nervous system: occasionally sensory neuropathy (10%) and rarely mononeuritis multiplex
- Heart, gastrointestinal tract, brain, other organs: rarely affected.
Read more about this topic: Wegener's Granulomatosis
Famous quotes containing the words signs and, signs and/or symptoms:
“Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)