I had the good fortune of receiving twenty minutes of properly
applied CPR and was then successfully resuscitated several years ago.
In London we have had someone go an astounding two and one half
hours and walk out after. I do not know if I was the first known
example but the case was so clear that it brooked no further
discussion. Since then we have seen a global change over take place
in medical thinking and the emergence of resuscitation practice.
This is from this item on the way to becoming very effective and very
portable. A mechanical cpr machine will be in ambulances and we may
even be able to tuck in a blod circulation machine while we are at
it.
However, present practice with CPR takes advantage of hydrostatic
pressure variation to jostle blood cells and thus allow continuing
oxygen up take while in the coma state. That is good enough to get
most observed victims to hospital.
Recall around ninety percent or more of victims who succumb to a
heart attack outside a hospital simply have not made it. I think
resuscitation will restore most of those victims from what we already
know.
Man Clinically Dead
For 40 Minutes Brought Back To Life
An Australian man dead
for 40 minutes after going into cardiac arrest was brought back to
life thanks to a new breakthrough resuscitation method.
The miracle comeback
happened at The Alfred hospital in Melbourne, which has been testing
a method using both mechanical CPR machine that performs chest
compressions and a portable heart-lung machine to keep oxygen and
blood flowing within the body. This keeps the body from suffering
permanent disabilities while doctors work to restore heart function.
The result was a man
dead for 40 minutes coming back to life.
Colin Fiedler, 39,
went into cardiac arrest last June, and, for 40 minutes, he was
clinically dead before finally being revived.
“I’m so grateful,
more than I could ever say,” he told the Herald Sun.
It was be chance that
he happened to be in the right place. While in the ambulance,
paramedics asked him which hospital he wanted to go to, and he picked
the right one.
“For some reason, I
said The Alfred, which is pretty lucky, because they are the only one
that has it,” he said.
The life-saving
method could soon spread. Physician Professor Stephen Bernard said
two years of trials have proven how effective the method can be, and
he now hopes it will spread beyond Melbourne.
The company that makes
the chest compression machine has already offered to make more of
them.
“We are looking to
where to best implement these machines around Melbourne,” he said.
Fiedler said his life
has changed since being brought back from the edge of death. He has
quit smoking and said he no longer stresses over the unimportant
things in life.
The man who was dead
for 40 minutes hasn’t been the only lucky one. There have been a
total of seven cardiac arrest patients revived at The Alfred using
the two-step combination of chest compressions and oxygenation. Two
others were also dead for between 40 and 60 minutes.
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