By the way, doctor: Why did my doctor prescribe steroids?
In temporal arteritis, cells of the immune system attack arteries in your head (including your brain). This attack causes pain and sometimes redness and swelling around the temporal arteries, which lie beneath the skin just above and to the side of your eyes. Treatment with corticosteroids reliably reduces the pain and swelling of the temporal arteries. It may prevent a more serious symptom — sudden blindness — that comes from the immune system attacking arteries deeper inside the head.
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