Spanish doctors resuscitated a 34-year-old British woman, whose heart stopped for six and a half hours as a result of hypothermia, the Vanguardia newspaper writes.
The incident with Audrey Mash and her husband in the Catalan Pyrenees happened back on November 3, but doctors from the Vall d'Hebron clinic in Barcelona only spoke of the "exceptional case" on Thursday.
The couple was taking a walk in the mountains when, with the onset of bad weather, the woman lost consciousness. The husband said that she had no pulse, breathing and, in general, signs of life. When the rescuers arrived, Mash's body temperature dropped to 18 degrees Celsius.
To resuscitate the woman in the clinic, an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) system was used, with the help of which cardiac activity was still restored.
To the surprise of doctors, the woman did not experience any neurological complications, except for loss of sensitivity in her fingers, as a result of which she had to buy new pants due to problems with buttoning.
According to an employee of the clinic, Eduard Argudo, the key factor for the resuscitation of the British woman was her brain condition. “There was a rapid cooling of the brain, and its need for oxygen dropped dramatically even before the cardiac arrest,” he said.
It is noted that cases of resuscitation of a victim with such a prolonged cardiac arrest are unique, in Spain this happened for the first time.
