[The first clinical description of granulomatosis with polyangiitis (known before as Wegener's granulomatosis)].

Before 1950, cases of necrotizing vasculitis were commonly published in journals of pathology. Most of these cases were designated as polyarteritis nodosa. In 1952, the pathologist Pearl Zeek critically reviewed and summarized the literature dealing with polyarteritis nodosa and first grouped the different types of necrotizing vasculitis. But she omitted some types of not well-characterized vasculitis, among them granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener's granulomatosis).