A British woman nearly died of a stroke while having sex. The bleeding started while her lover gave her oral sex.
The story may seem comical, but it almost turned tragic. In an article published by the British Medical Journalwe learn that a Briton had to be rushed to hospital while she was in the middle of an oral sex session.
According to the authors of the article, it is the imminent arrival of an orgasm which would have triggered in the patient a “transient loss of consciousness”, symptomatic of a cerebrovascular accident (CVA).
An intracerebral hemorrhage triggered by an orgasm
It was the woman’s partner who gave the alert, when he realized that the latter was unconscious. “Her partner estimated that she was unconscious for two to three minutes and no seizure activity was reported,” the authors write.
When she arrived at the emergency room at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, the woman was fully conscious and her vital signs had returned to normal. She simply complained of a headache that was 6 out of 10 on the pain scale. Her partner told the medical team that her body had stiffened in an unusual way during sex, which led doctors to carry out additional tests.
“The patient said she was in the process of reaching orgasm as she received cunnilingus from her partner before losing consciousness,” writes Dr Yunus Gokdogan from the emergency department of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and co-author of the report of BMJ. The medical team then suspected the patient of having suffered from reflex-mediated syncope linked to sexual activity: this is a loss of consciousness caused by a sudden lack of blood supply to the brain.
But further examinations revealed something quite different. Fearing that she was suffering from an intracerebral hemorrhage due to her persistent headache, doctors gave the patient a CT scan and then a CT angiogram, which revealed a 7mm aneurysm on the communicating artery anterior. This aneurysm led to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is a type of stroke.
A not so rare case
For the authors of the report, it is not so uncommon for strokes to occur during sexual intercourse. The cause: variations in blood pressure, which can lead to subarachnoid hemorrhage. “Activities that involve sudden increases in blood pressure and sexual activity are well described as a trigger. Studies with intra-arterial monitoring during coitus show that during sexual activity, blood pressure, as well as heart rate, are very labile, with particular increases during orgasm,” they write.
To treat the bleeding, doctors performed endovascular coiling of the aneurysm: this is a procedure using a small catheter that helps the aneurysm coagulate, preventing further bleeding.
The patient was discharged from the hospital 15 days after the operation. According to the authors of the report, after four months off, she is doing well.
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