After a patient nearly died from a sneeze that tore up his arteries, a Taichung-based emergency room doctor urged care in blood pressure control.
The patient, a 56-year-old Taiwanese man, checked himself into a hospital, complaining of intense pain following a sneeze at work, said Cheng Ching-wan (鄭清萬), a physician at the emergency room of Cheng Ching General Hospital’s Chung Kang branch.
Erroneously diagnosed with an acute lumbar injury, doctors gave the man two shots of powerful painkillers to no avail, he said, adding that the patient was then transferred to Cheng Ching.
Photo courtesy of Cheng Ching General Hospital’s Chung Kang branch
The man told doctors that he was feeling numbness in his lower left limbs, which had visibly paled, Cheng said on Tuesday last week.
An X-ray showed that the man had no visible injury to his spinal column, but his blood pressure was measured at 285 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) to 145mmHg, higher than the normal range of 130mmHg to 80mmHg, he said.
The man also had an 80mmHg blood pressure difference between the left and right side of his body, and had poor circulation in his left limbs, which were signs of some kind of severe disorder affecting a large blood vessel, Cheng added.
The man was transferred to the emergency room, where doctors conducted a scan and found multiple tears along a 40cm stretch of the aorta running from his chest to his waist, an injury with a 90 percent mortality rate, he said.
Doctors were able to save the patient after repairing the damage and placing stents into his arteries, Cheng said, adding that 100 milliliters of spilled blood was removed from the man’s body.
The main cause of the rupture appeared to have been soaring blood pressure from stress and fragile blood vessels, which were subjected to violent contractions from a sympathetic nervous response to the sneeze, he said.
The man was released from the hospital six days after the procedure, Cheng said.
People should get regular medical check-ups and should not delay seeking treatment if their blood pressure readings are abnormal, he said.
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