The hickey will have been fatal. A 17-year-old Mexican teenager has died of a stroke. At the origin of this incident: a hickey practiced by his girlfriend.
Love can be fatal. The Mexican press reports one of the most incongruous deaths: a 17-year-old young man died of a stroke in the capital Mexico City. The cause of this phenomenon is even more surprising. A hickey is the root cause of the blood clot that caused the stroke.
It was after an afternoon spent with his girlfriend that the young Julio Mecias Gonzalez presented strange symptoms. During dinner, the young man began to convulse. The emergency services, called urgently to the family home, concluded that a stroke was caused by a hickey. Indeed, the suction effect imprinted on the neck resulted in the formation of a blood clot which then went up to the young man’s brain.
A precedent in New Zealand
Seemingly harmless, hickeys are actually heavier than one might think. A team of New Zealand doctors noted a similar complication in November 2010. The 44-year-old woman, whose case is described in a scientific publication, presented to the hospital after the onset of paralysis in her left arm. Specialists diagnosed internal carotid thrombosis. The patient, on the other hand, developed a heart attack, which she survived.
As in the case of the young Mexican, the doctors noted the presence of a hickey during. “A vertical contusion, of small size, was noted on the right anterior part of the neck”, they note in the New Zealand Medical Journal. The injury had been performed a few days earlier. An “uncommon” traumatic pathway, as the authors of this publication recognize. The course of events is clearer: the practice of the hickey compressed the internal carotid artery, causing thrombosis.
The risk remains minimal, however, given the very low number of cases reported to the countless couples who practice this intimate gesture.
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