Minor Heart Defect Can Cause Stroke After Sex

It is only a minor heart defect, one attributed to one out of every four adults. And while the defect is not said to cause strokes, about 40% of people who suffer strokes--ones with no known cause--are said to have the defect. As the cause and effect has been explored for years, another medical case recently brought the connection back into the news.

In December of 2007, a 35-year-old Illinois woman began to feel stroke-like symptoms during intercourse. With numbness on one side of her face, slurred speech, and weakness in her left arm, she sought care at a medical facility and her condition worsened considerably over the next few hours. Face paralysis, garbled speech, and no movement in the left arm led the doctors to apply a clot-dissipating drug directly to the clot in her brain in an urgent effort to stop the stroke from progressing, and it worked. There was immediate improvement, and the stroke symptoms were nearly erased within 12 hours of the procedure.

Jose Biller, M.D., Professor and Chair of the neurology department at Loyola University in Chicago was the head of the medical team that treated the woman, and the experienced spawned a report that appeared in the September issue of Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases. The doctor initially looked further into the case because the woman was healthy with no history of cardiovascular disease; she was a young non-smoker with no known health concerns.

Strokes triggered by sex and/or orgasm are said to be rare in young people, but the factors that combine to cause the strokes in those situation are not uncommon, it is only their convergence that makes them unique. And the factor that Biller has examined is a minor heart defect called PFO, a patent foramen ovale, which is a small opening in the wall between the two upper chambers of the heart that allows blood to bypass the lung and flow straight to the brain.

PFO is common and can be found in one out of every four adults. The connection to the stroke is that 40 percent of people who suffer a cryptogenic stroke, which is one with no known cause, have a PFO. And the PFO’s trigger point is typically excessive strain that affects blood flow, such as during an orgasm, combined with a blood clot that breaks free and enters the heart, falls into the small opening, and follows through to the brain. This makes the entire process a relatively uncommon one, but the connection is significant enough to inspire more research.

Upon investigation of the patient, it was discovered that she did have one risk factor for clotting, which was her prescriptive birth control pills, which can lead to blood clots. And the woman did have a blood clot in a main vein of her right leg, which was the clot that found its way through her heart at the moment of her sexual experience, which ultimately caused her stroke. The patient was ultimately advised to cease taking the pills and schedule surgery to repair the heart defect, though the surgery is not recommended for the majority of people with a PFO.

In essence, many factors must collide at the precise time to coincide with sex for such a stroke to take place. Biller’s study noted that this should not be a concern for the average person. He emphasized, “This is a rare occurrence.”

Strokes, on the other hand, affect more than 700,000 Americans each year. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, approximately 160,000 of them do not survive, and many who do live with serious disabling consequences like partial paralysis and compromised brain function.

Some of the risk factors for stroke, especially in younger people, are migraine headaches, drug use, diseases that cause blood clotting, and athletic injuries that can cause a tear in neck arteries.