A woman almost died after having sex with her legs pressed against her chest, causing an aorta to 'pop' when she orgasmed

• A woman heard a "pop" noise in her chest and felt extreme back pain after she orgasmed with her legs against her chest.
• At the emergency room, doctors diagnosed her with acute aortic syndrome, which is fatal if untreated.

A woman's orgasm triggered a near-fatal condition, which landed her in the emergency room where doctors diagnosed her with a life-threatening heart syndrome.

Doctors working in the ER in Hattiesburg, Mississippi said the 45-year-old arrived at the hospital in excruciating pain. She said she climaxed during sex while her legs were touching her chest. That's when she heard a "pop" noise in her chest area and felt pain radiate to her back.

The doctors who treated her discovered she had acute aortic syndrome or AAS, a condition where an artery tears, blood leaks into the heart, and an ulcer forms inside.

Describing the rare case in the July edition of the American Journal of Case Reports, the team at Merit Health Wesley Hospital said it's the first time post-sex AAS has been reported.

The pain was so bad doctors gave her fentanyl

The pain was so excruciating, the woman said, it felt like someone was stabbing her. She also had nausea and trouble breathing, so she decided to go to the emergency room.

There, her doctors gave her morphine and fentanyl to help with the pain, which she said was a 10 on a scale of 10, and tested her to find the left side of her heart was not working properly.

With another test, her doctors found a blood clot in the woman's heart, which they said would have killed her if it were left untreated.

Doctors used blood-pressure medication to treat the woman

The woman, who the doctors did not identify in their case report, spent three days recovering in the hospital.

Her doctors said she had certain pre-existing conditions, including high blood pressure and smoking six to seven cigarettes daily, that may have increased her risk for AAS.

To help her, the doctors lowered the woman's blood pressure with the medication hydralazine. They also gave her an IV with two medications to control her heart rate. AAS is rare, with an estimated 2.9 diagnosed cases per 100,000 people every year. It's most common in men in their sixties, according to the American Heart Association. Every hour a person lives with AAS, their chance of dying increases 1% to 2%.

Twelve hours after she arrived at the hospital, the woman's heart rate started to stabilize, dropping from 98 to 86 beats per minute (a healthy range is between 60 to 100 beats per minute), so doctors moved her to the internal medicine unit.