Factitious Hypokalemia

Excerpt

To the editor: Most published reports of Munchausen's syndrome fall into one of three types originally described by Asher; acute abdominal, hemorrhagic, and neurologic (1-3). We here present an additional factitious symptom—hypokalemia. This may be a new type of Munchausen's syndrome, a "chemical type."

A 22-year-old married white woman was admitted to the Yale-New Haven Hospital complaining of fatigue and "persistent hypokalemia," repeatedly documented at a local hospital, for which she had been treated with intravenous potassium. Several months before she had arrived at the emergency room in a comatose state, in cardiac arrest; she was immediately revived by intracardiac potassium