Don't worry, sex is unlikely to trigger cardiac arrest

 

 

New research finds that sexual intercourse is only rarely tied to cardiac arrest, a condition that causes the heart to stop beating suddenly.

Cardiac arrest occurs when the heart unexpectedly stops beating, due to faulty electrical signaling that affects heart rate. Sudden cardiac arrest is, more often than not, fatal, and it requires immediate specialized attention in order for the worst outcome to be prevented.

The main factors that influence susceptibility to cardiac arrest include age, biological sex, race, and existing cardiovascular and metabolic conditions. Therefore, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute say that older men, black people, and individuals with a diagnosis of coronary heart disease or diabetes are most at risk.
Because of the poor outcome of cardiac arrest, many who consider themselves at risk may try to avoid certain activities, such as sex, believing that they render them more exposed.
But new research on which a number of prestigious institutions — including Helsinki University Hospital in Finland and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA — collaborated has revealed that it is unlikely that cardiac arrest will occur during sexual intercourse.

Low incidence of cardiac arrest due to sex

The researchers reviewed the medical records of adults from a Northwestern community in the United States between 2002 and 2015. In a population of around 1 million individuals, the team identified 4,557 cases of cardiac arrest.
For a case of cardiac arrest to be considered related to sexual activity, however, it was required to have occurred either "during or within 1 hour of sexual intercourse."
Of all the instances of cardiac arrest that the researchers identified, only 34 (0.7 percent) were considered "related to sexual activity," with 18 cases having occurred during sex and 15 cases immediately after.

In all, men were likelier to experience cardiac arrest due to sexual activity: 1 percent of all cases among male adults were related to intercourse. For women, only 0.1 percent of cardiac arrest events were due to sex.