Monique Anderson, M.D. of Duke Medicine was at a conference in Chicago presenting research on the importance of CPR and how vital it is to act as quickly and as early as you can when you are faced with someone who needs CPR. She and her colleague were in the lobby when they found a man lying face down, unconscious.
“He was face down, so we turned him over and felt for a pulse, and I think I was struck by the fact that he was stiff and blue, but turned him over, he had no pulse,” Anderson said. While her coworkers and bystanders rushed to call 911, she began CPR. Thankfully, after a few rounds, the man regained consciousness and was actually able to sit up and say “I’m okay”.
Even more amazingly, this whole incident happened before EMTs even arrived. A bystander, Carolina Malta Hansen, M.D., says that this incident illustrates the exact importance of acting before help arrives.
She went on to explain that someone in cardiac arrest is technically “dead” – their heart stops pumping blood to the brain and heart, and the more time that goes by, the more that person’s chance of survival decreases; 10 percent per minute, to be exact, according to Hansen.
The man is incredibly lucky that he was at a CPR conference of all places! Hansen and Anderson want to use this incident as a learning lesson for anyone and everyone that might someday find themselves in that situation.
