Fatality caused by self-bloodletting in a patient with factitious anemia.
Death by bloodletting among patients with factitious anemia has never been reported to our knowledge. We report the first known case. A 25-year-old woman with severe iron deficiency anemia confessed her habit of bloodletting at her first visit to our hospital, in March 1998. We prescribed oral iron and referred her to a psychiatrist. The diagnosis was borderline personality disorder. The psychiatrist began counseling the patient and prescribed a major tranquilizer. The patient's method of bloodletting was to insert an 18-gauge needle without syringe into her vein after inducing congestion in her arm. This method was considered to involve risk of death, because once the patient fell into a faint caused by blood loss, the bloodletting could not be stopped. Although we attempted to persuade the patient to stop bloodletting by this method, she died after self-bloodletting in September 1999. It is not known whether the death was intentional suicide or an accident.
Hirayama
Yasuo
Y
Department of Internal Medicine, Higashi Sapporo Hospital, Sapporo, Japan. yhirayama@hsh.or.jp
Sakamaki
Sumio
S
Tsuji
Yasushi
Y
Sagawa
Tamotsu
T
Takayanagi
Norihiro
N
Chiba
Hiroki
H
Matsunaga
Takuya
T
Kato
Junji
J
Niitsu
Yoshiro
Y
D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005162:Factitious Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D017809:Fatal Outcome; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018962:Phlebotomy / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000523:psychology*; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior / Q000523:psychology*