A case report of Munchausen syndrome presenting with bleeding from ear: a rare factitious disorder

Munchausen syndrome is a rare psychiatric illness that includes mimicking a group of medical conditions, in which a person repeatedly harms him or herself or falsely misinterprets any medical condition when he or she is not actually sick, in order to achieve health care attention. Underdiagnosis of this syndrome leads to irrelevant use of medical assets. Here, we document an interesting and rare case of a young girl presented in the outpatient department of the Otolaryngology department of Patel Hospital with episodes of bleeding from her ear, which is a rare presentation of Munchausen syndrome. Her complete physical, otolar yngological, haematological and radiological examination failed to reveal any clue towards a particular diagnosis. Hence a diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome was made by exclusion of other possibilities of ear bleeding, and it was considered as a case report after taking duly signed written consent from the patient. This report will help in increasing the self-knowledge and perception of different clinical based presentations of this syndrome in medical practitioners, in order to avoid overlooking such cases. Further exploratory work is required in this regard to discover the etiology and predisposing factors and to develop new treatment strategies.