Spanish doctors announced today that they managed to save the life of a British woman, whose heart function was interrupted for 6 hours after she suffered from hypothermia during a mountain trip.
"It's like a miracle," 34-year-old Audrey Mars told a news conference in Barcelona with members of the emergency services who rescued her on November 3.
"This is the longest-running cardiac arrest we know in Spain. "There are similar cases in the Alps and Scandinavia," Dr Eduard Argudo, head of the intensive care unit at Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, told AFP.
Audrey Mars, who lives in Barcelona, fainted around 13.00 local time, after being at the mercy of a snowstorm during a trip to the Pyrenees with her husband. As soon as the rescue teams arrived, at 15.35, she did not show any signs of heart function and her body temperature had dropped to 18 degrees Celsius.
After the first attempts at resuscitation, to no avail, the woman was airlifted to Vall d`Hebron Hospital, which has an innovative resuscitation system, ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation).
Around 21.45, more than 6 hours after her rescue, after waiting for the 34-year-old's body temperature to rise, the doctors tried to bring her back. "We decided to electrocute her to try to restore her heart and that worked," Dr. Argudo explained.
As he explained, the success of the whole effort is mainly due to the hypothermia that the patient had suffered. "Hypothermia killed her and at the same time saved her. "With the cold, the metabolism slows down, the organs need less blood and oxygen and this allows the brain to be protected."
Audrey Mars' recovery was unusually rapid. Six days later, she was transferred from the intensive care unit without any neurological damage. Although she cannot move her arms completely due to the hypothermia, she practically has "a normal life" and "will return to work in the next few days", it is emphasized in a statement issued by the hospital.