Medics have been left stunned after a woman started crying tears of blood in an extremely rare medical anomaly.
The 25-year-old woman, who has been pictured but not named, sought help at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, where she was diagnosed with haemolacria, MirrorUK reports.
Haemolacria is a physical condition that causes a person to produce tears that are partially composed of blood.
The illness has been famous in movies such as Casino Royale with James Bond villain, Le Chiffre, who wept blood from a damaged vessel in his left eye.
The exact cause of the condition is uncertain, but doctors think the fact that the patient was menstruating at the time could be important.
Dr Soumitra Ghosh, who documented the case in a new study, said;
Haemolacria means bloody tears. Patients will have blood coming out from one or both eyes. Blood coming out with tears is a very alarming clinical entity both for the patient and physician. If you see blood coming out from the eyes, you can imagine how scary a situation it is.
The exact cause of the condition is uncertain, but doctors think the fact that the patient was menstruating at the time could be important.
Dr Ghosh said;
Haemolacria is a rare clinical condition. It has multiple causes. One of the causes is vicarious menstruation.
Vicarious menstruation is defined as cyclical bleeding in other extrauterine organs like the nose, eyes, ears, intestine, lungs, nipples and skin.
Haemolacria due to vicarious menstruation is very, very rare. Only a few cases have been reported in medical literature so far.
He continued;
It is considered to be a response of the eyes’ blood vessels to hormones. Certain ocular and orbital tissues are seen to be hormonally responsive.
Oestrogen and progesterone can increase the permeability of the capillaries resulting in hyperaemia, congestion and secondary bleeding from extrauterine tissue.
The patient was treated with oral oestrogen-progesterone contraceptive pills which appears to have stopped her crying tears of blood again.
On her three month follow-up, the patient was on these pills and she had no repeat of the episode.
