Case report: An unusual case of pica

✍ Scribed by Nicholas Beecroft; Laura Bach; Nigel Tunstall; Robert Howard

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 103 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1166(199809)13:9<638::aid-gps837>3.0.co;2-n

✦ Synopsis

Pica is the persistent, culturally and developmentally inappropriate ingestion of non-nutritive substances (DSM-IV). AB is a 75-year-old lady with a 40-year history of schizophrenia and a 20-year history of pica who, at emergency laparotomy, had £175.32 of loose change in her stomach. Although pica has been reported to coexist with schizophrenia, she had had no positive symptoms of schizophrenia for at least 20 years. She has CT evidence of frontotempotal atrophy most marked on the left in the temporal lobe and on the right in the frontal lobe. Pica has been found to be related to cognitive de®cits and hyperoral behaviour to temporal lesions. Neuropsychological testing reveals de®cits closely related to these changes.