A memorable patient: An elderly man with flushing

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7373.1160

BMJ 2002;325:1160 ( 16 November )

Filler

A memorable patient

An elderly man with flushing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

An old friend aged 78 occasionally complained that he had attacks of flushing, often after quite small amounts of alcohol.He had no other complaints, so I, in my ignorance, made lightof it, with a joke about the "male menopause," and thought nomore about it. He was a fit man, apart from fairly well controlledhypertension, who had been rowing competitively until his 70thbirthday, and he rarely visited his generalpractitioner.

A month or two later, when I visited him, his face was unusually red, and he complained of a lump under his ribs. He askedme to examine it, and when I palpated his abdomen I found he hada hard nodular liver two finger breadths below the ribs obviouslyriddled with carcinoma. These problems always arise at a weekend,when the patient's general practitioner is not available. So,as he had private medical insurance, I immediately . . . [Full text of this article]