Man Survives After 3 Hours Without a Heartbeat
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A British man whose heart stopped for three-and-a-half hours was brought back to life by a machine that performed 20,000 life-saving chest compressions.
Engineer Arun Bhasin, 53, was found lying unconscious in Croydon, south London, in December in freezing temperatures after falling in the street and hitting his head.
He was rushed to the hospital, but he suffered cardiac arrest, the British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Luckily, he had been taken to the Croydon University Hospital where two of the U.K.'s top experts in resuscitation – Dr. Nigel Raghunath and Dr. Russell Metcalfe-Smith – are based.
They put Bhasin on a pioneering new CPR machine, AutoPulse, which performed almost 20,000 life-saving chest compressions to keep his heart and lungs functioning.
"He was pretty much dead in that he had no pulse or heartbeat for three-and-a-half hours so it is amazing that we got him back,” Raghunath said. “I've not seen anything like it in 15 years.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Bhasin said he should be dead.
“I can't believe they kept me alive for so long. It's a miracle. They are amazing people and I know I am very, very lucky."