A man’s bout of self pleasure ended in a potentially deadly heart emergency, as he suffered a torn artery after masturbating.
The 59-year-old man called an ambulance after getting a tight jaw and tingling in his hands following his solo sesh.
Doctors were baffled by his symptoms, at first fearing he had a severe case of sepsis.
But a battery of tests revealed he had in fact suffered a tear to his aorta, the body’s largest artery that carries blood from the heart to the body, medically called aortic dissection.
This resulted in severe aortic regurgitation, a medical emergency where the blood flows backwards into the heart.
Aortic dissection is a rare condition that can be life-threatening if not identified and treated promptly.
People suffering the health emergency usually experience a sharp, ripping pain in their chest or upper back, as well as shortness of breath, heavy sweating, confusion and severe stomach pain, the Cleveland Clinic states.
But unusually, the patient in question suffered no chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of consciousness or nausea as would be expected in health emergency of this type.
Only about 6.4 per cent of patients with aortic dissections don’t experience chest pain, doctors from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital in New York – who oversaw the man’s case – wrote.
“As such, painless dissections are atypical presentations, more likely to be associated with increased mortality,” the said in a report published to the journal Clinic and Experimental Emergency Medicine.
