To investigate the role of multiple slide preparations in defining false from true negative temporal artery biopsies in cases of temporal giant cell arteritis.

Paraffin embedded blocks of 100 randomly selected cases with clinical diagnosis of giant cell arteritis but negative histopathology in a 5-year period were retrieved completely and new slides were re-evaluated by light microscopy in terms of histopathology findings of giant cell arteritis. The demographic and analytic data were processed by SPSS version 22.

Among the total of 100 randomized cases, mean age was 62.75±12.8 years with 1.17 female to male ratio. The initial length of excised temporal artery was 15.39±7.56 mm. The mean number of initial slides/patient was 3.24±0.74 with mean of 2.93±0.2 sections/slide. The average of total initial sections/patient was 9.53±2.46 with 0.72±0.29 section/1 mm of artery. After retrieval, the mean number of slides/patient was 2.83±0.96 with mean of 2.84±0.39 sections/slide. The average of total secondary sections/patient was 8.12±3.09 with 0.63±0.39 sections/1 mm of artery. The average of total prepared sections per each specimen was 17.66±4.43. Among the retrieved specimens, only one case (1%) showed the histopathological findings of giant cell arteritis.

Despite the presence of skip lesions in histopathology of temporal giant cell arteritis, increasing the levels of routine sections does not increase the diagnostic yield of the histopathology.