{"id":12369,"date":"2019-12-08T05:52:26","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T00:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=12369"},"modified":"2019-12-08T05:52:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T00:52:26","slug":"woman-survives-six-hour-cardiac-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/12369","title":{"rendered":"Woman Survives Six-Hour Cardiac Arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British woman has made a full recovery after suffering a six-hour cardiac arrest \u00a0caused by severe hypothermia, a condition that doctors say also saved her life.<\/p>\n

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Thirty four-year-old Audrey Schoeman was caught in a snowstorm while hiking in the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain on November 3, and her husband Rohan called the emergency services when she passed out, according to a statement from Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona.<\/div>\n
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“I thought she was dead,” Rohan said in an interview with local broadcaster.<\/div>\n
“I was trying to feel for a pulse… I couldn’t feel a breath, I couldn’t feel a heartbeat.” he added.<\/div>\n
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Schoeman was taken to Vall d’Hebron, where doctor Jordi Riera was part of the team that treated her.<\/div>\n
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According to the Riera, the human brain usually suffers irreparable damage if the heart stops beating for five minutes, and Schoeman represents a very rare case.<\/div>\n
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“What happened to her is a consequence of the drop in body temperature,” Riera said.<\/div>\n
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He explained that Schoeman survived with a perfect neurological outcome because the extreme drop in body temperature that stopped her heart also slowed her brain metabolism, allowing the organ to cope better with the lack of oxygen.<\/div>\n
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Schoeman’s body temperature had dropped to 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 Fahrenheit) — far lower than the normal 36.5–37.5 degrees Celsius (97.7–99.5 Fahrenheit) — and the hospital team used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to keep her alive.<\/div>\n
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ECMO replaces the function of the heart and lungs, allowing doctors to oxygenate Schoeman’s blood and pump it round the body.<\/div>\n
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Riera, who is medical director of the ECMO program at Vall d’Hebron, said her body slowly warmed up and they were able to get her heart beating again after six hours.<\/div>\n
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“She woke up and asked: ‘What am I doing here?'” said Riera.<\/div>\n
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Schoeman suffered a slight loss of sensitivity in her hands, but should recover fully, said Riera.<\/div>\n
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She will be returning to work on Monday, he added, just over a month after the incident.<\/div>\n
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“As a scientist I don’t like the word but it’s like a miracle,” said Riera.<\/div>\n
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Schoeman expressed her gratitude to the medical team and told that she is keen to carry on her life as normal.<\/div>\n
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A British woman has made a full recovery after suffering a six-hour cardiac arrest \u00a0caused by severe hypothermia, a condition that doctors say also saved her life. Thirty four-year-old Audrey Schoeman was caught in a snowstorm while hiking in the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain on November 3, and her husband Rohan called the emergency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31,1416],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-news","category-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12371,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12369\/revisions\/12371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}