A 53-year-old unnamed Frenchman suffered a heart attack and has been resuscitated more than 18 hours after his heart stopped beating. Medical experts have said that his survival is a medical and human adventure and has left the medical team stupefied. The man only survived because the incident happened outside, where he caught and benefitted from hypothermia. According to the reports, the French man had a heart attach while walking back from his brother’s house in Beziers, Montpelliar on March 12. The patient is now recovering in hospital and is not expected to suffer any brain damage.

Relatives noticed that the man had not returned home and after searching for him for some time, they found him unconscious by a river. They immediately called paramedics who discovered he was suffering with hypothermia with a body temperature of 22-degree C, instead of the normal 37-degree C. They started to resuscitate him at the scene with doctors taking over once they got him to the hospital. Medics carried on with heart massages for more than four hours before placing him on a heart-lung machine. This kept him alive until his body temperature rose enough for them to make another attempt to get his heart going.

Jonathan Charbit from the ICU at Montpelliar University Hospital said, “The medical team was stupefied. The probability of him surviving was near to zero.” Dr Charbit also claimed that the man survived because his hypothermia protected vital organs while emergency workers persisted with heart massages. Dr Charbit also added, “The doctors judged, rightly, that it was perhaps the hypothermia that was stopping the heart from getting going again. It was necessary to warm up the patient before concluding that the massages had failed.” The patient suffered several broken ribs because of the amount of heart massages and needed to stay on the heart-lung machine for three days.

The man is still on respiratory support, but he can now walk. Friends and relatives are relieved that the man survived the scare in such a dramatic fashion. Xavier Capdevilla runs the ICU at Montpelliar Hospital and is pleased with the progress his patient is making. He also said that the patient is heading towards a total recovery.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 09, 2018 09:03 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).