France international Hassane Kolingar has revealed he suffered a cardiac arrest after taking snus over the summer.

The Racing 92 loosehead returned to action last week, featuring in the Top 14 clash against Lyon. But he has admitted he feared he would never play again after the medical episode, which happened at the wedding of his team-mate Ibrahim Diallo.

Kolingar also revealed that he had to be shocked four times, while he has since undergone a five-hour surgery to clean a scar on his heart that has been present since childhood.

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“When I got there [to the wedding], I stuck a snus against my gum and sat down while waiting for the bride and groom,” Kolingar told Midi Olympique.

“It’s not illegal – there’s tobacco in it but it’s real s---, I think. At one point, I burst out laughing and immediately felt pressure in my chest. My heart was beating really hard and I was sweating a lot; seeing stars.

“I thought I was just having a hypoglycaemic episode and, so I would not ruin the ceremony, I moved aside. My eardrums were banging, I felt like someone was sticking needles in my head.

“I was in pain, really bad pain and my eyes were rolling back. I was going into cardiac arrest.”

Snus is an oral tobacco product made up of ground tobacco and sometimes flavouring. The moist tobacco pouches look similar to a small tea bag and are usually placed between the upper lip and the gums. From there, it releases nicotine into the bloodstream.

Midi Olympique report that Yoan Tanga and Henry Chavancy were among a group of players to tend to three-cap Kolingar.

“It was a tachycardia incident, basically,” added Kolingar. “Because my pulse wouldn’t go down, the firefighters put me into a coma. To wake me up, they shocked me four times.”

The 26-year-old was initially taken to hospital in Auxerre, before being transferred to the cardiology department of an institute in the Parisian suburb of Le Plessis-Robinson. From there, he sought the services of a surgeon in Bordeaux to undertake a five-hour operation.

“The purpose of the operation was to clean the scar I had on my heart since birth,” he said. “To do that, [the surgeon] had to trigger a new cardiac arrest.”