Back from the brink of death

Bengaluru: It was nothing short of a miracle. The doctors had almost given up on a patient, after their efforts to revive him failed, and were about to pronounce him dead. But then they suddenly noticed that his heart had started beating again!

This is the story of 53-year-old Amaresh Reddy. He was suffering from neck pain and vague chest discomfort for a few days and had approached a local doctor, who advised him to immediately get cardiology consultation done. While on the way to the hospital, Amaresh collapsed and became unresponsive.

“Our emergency response team had been giving Amaresh cardiac massage for 45 minutes in a bid to resuscitate him and incubated him, but after feeling the pulse and checking the monitor for electrical activity of the heart, we lost hope,” says Dr Vinod Revankar, Consultant – Interventional Cardiology, Columbia Asia Hospital. “We were about to declare him dead, when all the medical parameters suggested so, but in a fraction of a second we saw activity.”

Once his heart started beating he was immediately wheeled to operating room (cathlab) where he was subjected to an angiogram. The angiogram revealed 100% block in one of his major vessel. “We had suspected Amaresh’s neurological outcome to be poor in view of 45 minutes of resuscitation. We were scared that even if Amaresh survived, he might go to a vegetative state or remain comatose,” added the doctor.

“We just did not know how to feel and react when we got the news that our father’s heart is again beating,” said Amaresh’s daughter.

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