When a 13-year-old girl in India named Twinkle Dwivedi began bleeding “spontaneously” from her head, eyes, hands and feet, the National Geographic Channel decided to make a documentary about this medical mystery.
And, when Nat Geo wanted an American expert to help document the case, they called upon our own Dr. George Buchanan, a blood and cancer specialist at Children’s Medical Center Dallas with more than 40 years of experience and an international reputation for diagnosing medical conditions. Dr. Buchanan is the chief of hematology-oncology at Children’s and a professor of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
At National Geographic’s request, Dr. Buchanan traveled to Mumbai, India, to work with local physician experts to see if modern medical techniques and close observation could help diagnose Twinkle’s condition, one Dr. Buchanan had never seen before.
What he saw when he got to meet Twinkle was a sweet teen-ager who did appear to bleed from her scalp, eyes, hands and feet; however, what gave Dr. Buchanan and his Indian colleagues pause was that neither he nor they ever saw the start of the bleeding, leaving them unable to either confirm or deny the claims.
Dr. Buchanan believes the mystery will not be solved until Twinkle is observed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a controlled setting where the start of her bleeding can be seen.
See for yourself whether you believe Twinkle spontaneously bleeds. The Nat Geo documentary, “The Girl Who Cries Blood,” premieres on Sunday, Sept. 13, at 8 p.m. local time on the National Geographic Channel. Dr. Buchanan will be featured in an interview Thursday, Sept. 10, on NBC Channel 5 during the station’s 10 p.m. newscast on the subject of Twinkle and will be interviewed on the NBC “Today Show” on Friday, Sept. 11. Check our video to see what Dr. Buchanan has to say about the case.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
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3 comments:
As a pediatrician, I appreciated Dr. Buchanan's gentle bedside manner with this family. I also agree with his suspicions that this is a factitious disorder, for several of the reasons he stated and others: 1) The pattern does not fit any medical condition ever described 2) There is no pathologic basis for bleeding through an intact scalp 2) All laboratory was testing was negative 3) No one has directly observed the bleeding -- only dried blood on the patient afterward 4) There is a huge amount of potential secondary gain for this family -- even a TV special 5) The patient and her mother seemed overly defensive when asked politely and respectfully if the condition was factitious 6) The dramatic images of large streaks of dried bloody "tears" on the patients face seem implausible. I imagine a person would wipe away such tears, unless they were specifically trying to attract attention to them. 7)News reports stated that the mother had misrepresented the patient's absence from school, in that she was removed from school prior to the bleeding episodes, not because of them
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Is it possible that the blood comes from the hair folicles?
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