Dead for 30 Minutes, 50-Year-Old Woman Revived Through Surgery

She survived despite her brain having no oxygen supply for 10 minutes.

Stock photo of doctors performing surgery. 

(Photo: AP screengrab)

In a miraculous turn of events, a 50-year-old woman who could be clinically termed ‘dead’ came back to life, completely unscathed and normal.

Saraswati Devi, began experiencing chest pains recently, following which she went to Fortis Escorts Heart Institute for a regular check-up.

After studying her reports, doctors decided she needed an urgent bypass procedure. On 14 August, when she was being wheeled into the operation theater, she suffered from a massive heart attack and her blood pressure plummeted to zero.

The doctors immediately began to administer CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). This helped ensure that the blood and oxygen circulation continued. However, the patient still didn’t show any signs of revival.

CPR was administered for 20 minutes after which the doctors decided to take a leap of faith and continue with the bypass surgery.

For the 10 minutes that she was being prepped for surgery, no massage was conducted, there was no heartbeat and blood pressure was zero. The oxygen supply to the organs was also completely cut off and, in effect, the patient could have suffered irreparable and irreversible loss to the cells.

Dr SN Khanna, Associate Director, Cardiac Surgery, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, who led the team of doctors operating on her said:

We had to work fast as we needed to ensure that the brain does not go without oxygen supply for too long. Medically a person is declared brain dead if the oxygen has not reached the brain for four minutes. In this case oxygen did not reach the brain for 10 minutes.

Dr Khanna added, “Therefore the fear was that patient would suffer from severe brain impairment. We were extremely apprehensive about the condition the patient would be in when she woke up after surgery but there was no untoward damage to her brain functions. It was nothing short of a miracle.”

A case as this in the first place is rare to be even taken up for surgery post a heart attack followed by an unresponsive resuscitation.

The patient was discharged on 24 August and has returned back home to Sonebhadra district in Uttar Pradesh.