Minimising factitious hyperkalaemia

Hyperkalaemia.

Hyperkalaemia is defined as serum potassium concentration greater than 5.5 mmol/l. Its prevalence in the general population is unknown, but it is thought to occur in 1-10% of patients admitted to hospital.1 The rate of morbidity and mortality associated with hyperkalaemia has risen greatly with the use of drugs that target the renin-angiotensin system, and since publication 10 years ago of a ra...

Factitious Urticaria

sensitive as to resent the slightest irritation, appears, perhaps, more surprising than that the gastric mucous membrane should occasionally be subject to intense excitement at the presence of various articles of food. We seem to expect the skin to resist pressure and irritation as one of its functions, and are therefore surprised when the phenomena of factitious urticaria occur. There is no do...

Spurious hyperkalaemia: an insight.

Hyperkalaemia is a common electrolyte disorder with potentially lethal consequences and can lead to life-threatening cardiac dysrhythmias. Spurious hyperkalaemia, also known as pseudohyperkalaemia or factitious hyperkalaemiais, is also quite common in clinical practice and it's a source of avoidable emergency department visits or hospital admissions. We report a case in which alarming hyperkala...

Factitious disorder in adolescence.

Factitious disorder (FD) is defined as a condition in which a person voluntarily produces symptoms or illness and acts as if they are ill without an external gain (1). In the Psychiatric Disorders Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), it is divided into three types as “Factitious disorders with predominantly psychological signs and symptoms”, “Factitious disorders with...

Malingering and Factitious Disorders