First Report of “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Variant” in an Injection Drug User with 12 New Organisms in Blood Cultures 17 Days after Admission to the Hospital

Don Walter Kannangara; Roopa  Anmolsingh; Dhyanesh Pandya

doi:10.31487/j.DDA.2020.01.05

First Report of “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Variant”

First Report of “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Variant” in an Injection Drug User with 12 New Organisms in Blood Cultures 17 Days after Admission to the Hospital

Author Info

Don Walter Kannangara Roopa Anmolsingh Dhyanesh Pandya

Corresponding Author

Don Walter Kannangara
St Luke’s Health network, Warren Campus, Phillipsburg, NJ 08865, USA

A B S T R A C T

The term Munchausen syndrome is used to describe a situation where a person inflicts an illness or injury on self. Munchausen syndrome by proxy is when a person fabricates an illness on behalf of another. We report the case of an injection drug user admitted to the hospital for a spinal epidural abscess which was drained, treated with antibiotics and doing well, suddenly becoming very sick and febrile on day 17. The blood cultures grew a total of 12 organisms including 2 fungi. Someone who visited the patient in the hospital around this time was suspected to have injected a solution of drugs brought from home directly into the patient’s intravenous line used to administer antibiotics resulting in a polymicrobial bacteremia/fungemia. Presence of Lactobacilli in one blood culture raised the suspicion that the girl friend who was also a drug user, may have been responsible as Lactobacilli are more frequently found in hands of females. We caution physicians and nurses to be vigilant when handling injection drug users and other drug abusers admitted to hospital. Materials brought to the patient’s room from outside must be screened. New onset of unexpected symptoms should alert caregivers of the possibility of such abuse.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Tue 22, Sep 2020
Accepted: Fri 09, Oct 2020
Published: Fri 16, Oct 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Don Walter Kannangara. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.DDA.2020.01.05