Münchhausen's Syndrome

Synonyms:
Artifactual illness, chronic factitious disorder with physical symptoms, chronic factitious illness, factitious disease, factitious chronic syndrome, factitious syndrome, hospital addiction, hospital hobo, hospital vagrant, hysterical malingering syndrome, laparotomophilia migrans, munchausenism, pathomimia, peregrinating problem patient, polysurgical addiction, professional patient, scalpellophilia, SHAFT (sad, hostile, anxious, factitious, tenacious) syndrome, surgical mania, tomomania syndrome, toxicomania chirurgica.

Associated persons:
Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen
Vincent Willem Van Gogh

Description:
A type of malingering or factitious disorder in which the patient, usually a vagrant, wanders from hospital to hospital, feigning severe illness of dramatic and emergency nature in order to be admitted. The patient, always a confabulating, pathological liar, may even practise self-mutilation in order to prove pain. Once admitted to a hospital, they often create havoc by demanding special attention and quarrelling violently with the doctors and nurses. Their story is clinically plausible and subsequently invariably found to be false. When detected, such patients leave one hospital and appear in the emergency room of another. They may sometimes discharge themselves from hospital against medical advice.

Patients classically have a history of many hospital admissions and extensive travelling; police records and borderline drug addiction. Having been discharged, the patient is likely to turn up at another hospital with the same story, or at the original hospital with another story. The expert pretence and degree of subterfuge these patients employ in order to have innumerable diagnostic procedures or additional major operations, are almost inconceivable. Such patients submit to uncomfortable diagnostic procedures, such as gastroscopy, and exhibit an utter lack of comprehension of the risks of repetitive surgery. Patients of this type are seldom recognised in time to receive psychiatric diagnoses and therapy, which they need. Male to female ratio 3: 1; age ranging from 19 to 62 years (mean 39). The eponymic designation was suggested by Richard Asher in 1951.

Münchhausen patients may be extremely expensive to the health care system. According to Guinness Book of Records (1993), William McIloy cost Britain’s National Hospital Service about $4 million over 50 years. 400 major and minor operations, 100 different hospitals using 22 aliases.

Source: Whonamedit.com