A 22 -year -old woman was brought back to life after a four -hour heart massage and dozens of defibrillator strokes in a hospital in Oise. An extremely rare case.
An incredible story. On February 9, a 22-year-old woman was found inanimate in the streets of Nogent-sur-Oise. Day temperature: 3 small degrees. While the young woman is in hypothermia and cardiac arrest, the rescue teams, the firefighters then the public hospital of Creil (Oise) take over to try to save her. She finally survived after a 4 -hour cardiac massage reports Le Parisien this Friday, March 21. A feat, even, a small miracle that caregivers do not really explain. Usually a massage does not exceed half an hour.
“She is now out of danger and without any neurological sequelae,” says Dr Estelle Renaud, a structure head of the resuscitation service of Creillois hospital, still in the columns of the Parisian. But “we had never seen that,” she says, always speechless after such a way out. A month and a half earlier, when this 22 -year -old woman was found in the early morning, unconscious, she suffers from hypothermia and the temperature of her body does not exceed 25 degrees, instead of the usual 37 degrees. Add to that a cardiac arrest, and you get a more than critical situation, in which the chances of getting out of it drastically decrease as the seconds run out.
“And there she opened her eyes”
While the firefighters arrive on the spot to take care of it and inject it from adrenaline, its heart rate “was completely anarchic,” says Estelle Renaud. “In normal times, the heart beats like a metronome”, here it was absolutely not the case. To try to wake her up, health staff used a defibrillator … “more than 40 times”! “While in general, 10 to 15 strokes, it is already a lot for this case,” says the doctor. Heart massages do nothing, it is then transported to the emergency room.
Despite new cardiac massages provided by a machine, the heart still does not respond. Direction the resuscitation service for a final attempt. After two new hours of intense effort, the body temperature of this 22 -year -old woman climbs up to 32 degrees, the miracle is underway. “And there she opened her eyes,” recalls the structure chief of the resuscitation service of the hospital.
As surprising as it may seem, the young woman now presents “no neurological sequelae”. On the other hand, its organs have “suffered” from many heart massages and their duration. “We looked for similar cases in scientific literature, but we found nothing,” says the doctor. Can a beginning of explanation be given? “It is” paradoxically the hypothermia that protected it “, concedes Dr Estelle Renaud. In fact, the brain” puts itself in hibernation “she confides, which makes it possible to preserve the vital organs, and to reach sometimes, to small miracles.