A doctor described the condition that was the cause of death for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham as being similar to a “knife to the heart.”
Dr. Robert Aru of Thomas Jefferson University told ABC News that his patients suffering from an aortic dissection present with “the worst chest or back pain of their life that is similar to a ripping or stabbing sensation.”
Medical Examiners for the District of Columbia have said 71-year-old Graham died Saturday to “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” Dr. Kendra J. Grubb, a heart surgeon formerly at Emory University, described the pain as a knife to the chest.
The South Carolina senator’s death was announced as a “brief and sudden illness.” Paramedics were reportedly called to Graham’s D.C. home after receiving reports of someone suffering from severe chest pains.
An aortic dissection is what happens when the inner lining of the aorta, the main artery carrying blood from the heart to the rest of the body, tears, forcing blood into the rest of the artery. If blood is able to break through the outerlining of the artery, it is almost always fatal, per Your Vascular Health.
An official cause of death will be disclosed following toxicological and microscopic testing.
Symptoms including shortness of breath, fainting, difficulty walking, sudden loss of vision and severe chest pain, are often misdiagnosed as a heart attack, but this is a separate condition, and in almost all cases requires emergency surgery to prevent death.
Dr. Jason Lee, the chief of vascular surgery at Stanford Medicine, told The San Francisco Chronicle that this condition is common among men in their 60s and 70s who work in stressful environments.
Graham was conducting diplomacy in Kyiv two days before his death.
According to the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health, around 20,000 people in the U.S. suffer a tear in any given year.
Earlier this year, the condition claimed the life of Graham’s fellow Republican lawmaker Rep. Doug LaMalfa of Ohio.