Malingering and symptom magnification: a case report illustrating the limitations of clinical judgement.

Malingering and symptom embellishment are of concern to specialists in pain medicine. Valid criteria to identify malingering individuals suffering chronic pain do not exist. We present a case of a patient on worker's compensation identified as a malingerer by six different physicians who had evaluated the patient for her chronic complaints. Ultimately, she was found to have a lesion that explained all of her subjective complaints. Physicians should exercise caution in labeling patients suffering intractable pain as malingerers.