TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2003//
TI  - Fatality caused by self-bloodletting in a patient with factitious anemia
JO  - International journal of hematology
A1  - Hirayama, Yasuo
A1  - Sakamaki, Sumio
A1  - Tsuji, Yasushi
A1  - Sagawa, Tamotsu
A1  - Takayanagi, Norihiro
A1  - Chiba, Hiroki
A1  - Matsunaga, Takuya
A1  - Kato, Junji
A1  - Niitsu, Yoshiro
SP  - 146
EP  - 148
VL  - 78
IS  - 2
N2  - 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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0925-5710
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02983383
ID  - ref1
ER  -