LIVED FOUR DAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 63, 15 March 1945, Page 4

LIVED FOUR DAYS

HEART MASSAGE PATIENT

P.A. DUNEDIN, This Day. From Inquiries made in Dunedin it is learned that the patient whose animation was restored by heart massage expired after remaining unconscious for four days. It would appear, nevertheless, that a double surgical record was created in the case. The patient had been successfully treated for a brain abscess and was having teeth extracted, but collapsed and died. After a lapse of 12 minutes the heart was made to function again and the patient was kept alive for nearly four days. Records available locally show no case in which a patient whose heart stopped beating for more than eight minutes following an operation has recovered sufficiently to leave the operating table. The period of survival for a patient revived after the heart stopped beating for eight minutes or more is in this case also believed to be a record. A case is reported' from America where a patient whose heart stopped beating for eight minutes was revived for 12 hours. Cases where the heart ceased to beat for five minutes are recorded in which the patient has been restored to health. Between five and eight minutes they have been revived, but none have fully recovered.