70 mins without a working heart
After more than an hour of continuous CPR had failed to restart Marcos Garcia’s heart, his wife was told to expect the worst.
But paramedics refused to give up and, using an unconventional technique, miraculously prodded the 52-year-old Wellington man’s heart back into action.
Just hours after Garcia survived a harrowing 70 minutes on the verge of death, he was able to fist pump his 17-year-old son, who had played a part in saving him.
Garcia and his wife, Kris D’Souza, knew he had a dodgy ticker. He was due to have his annual check-up for his arrhythmia at 9am on the day his heart stopped. He never made the appointment.
At 5.37am on September 5, D’Souza was woken when her husband made ‘‘a big noise and flung his arms out’’ then started convulsing. Knowing something was terribly wrong, she immediately rang 111. She was instructed to get her husband onto the floor, but his still-convulsing 194cm frame was too difficult to move.
She yelled for their son, Jonny Garcia, who was downstairs, and they managed to move her husband off the bed. The two of them had been trained in CPR and the 111 operator told them to start administering it immediately.
‘‘He actually stopped breathing while we were talking to her, so we were applying CPR to his chest,’’ D’Souza said.
It seemed like an age, but just nine minutes later a team of Wellington Free Ambulance paramedics were on the spot and took over. Fire Service staff arrived shortly after to help.
But Garcia’s heart would not resume its rhythm. ‘‘It was all quite harrowing and there was nothing we felt we could do,’’ D’Souza said.
The paramedics were monitoring his heart, which kept stopping.
‘‘But he kept giving them signs of life. At one stage he grabbed one of the paramedic’s hand and held on to it so tightly that he had to prise his fingers off,’’ she said.
After about 40 minutes of continuous CPR, a paramedic took D’Souza and her son aside to tell them that it didn’t look good and they should get family support.
‘‘He said they couldn’t stabilise him, so they wouldn’t be taking him to hospital,’’ D’Souza said.
The paramedic said the chance of brain damage was high after even 15 minutes. ‘‘So it didn’t look good from that perspective either.’’
Wellington Free Ambulance flight paramedic James Casey said this was normal procedure in that circumstance because the chances of survival were so low.
‘‘Most international guidelines say that after 40 minutes of CPR with no measurable improvement, people aren’t surviving beyond that.’’
What gave them motivation to continue was that Garcia was still showing signs of life, he said. ‘‘We just had to keep going.’’
In a last-ditch effort to get his heart started again, Casey decided to use the defibrillator in its pacing function. That usually only works if the heart’s atria, or upper chambers, are still functioning, which did not seem to be the case for Garcia.
‘‘That was really the only way we were going to be able to possibly provide his brain with the oxygen and blood supply that it needed while getting him down and out of the house,’’ Casey said.
Miraculously, it worked, and after 70 minutes of CPR they were able to stabilise Garcia and whisk him to hospital. At this stage, they still did not know if there was any brain damage.
Incredibly, within 15 to 20 minutes of Garcia’s sedation being stopped, he was able to respond to hospital staff, and his family was called to his bedside.
When told about the role his son played in the moment following his cardiac arrest, Garcia raised his hand to fist pump him in thanks.
‘‘I’ll just be forever grateful. I just can’t put into words how grateful I am,’’ he said.
Casey said it was a team effort and everybody played a part.
‘‘I’ve been working as a paramedic for 12 years, and there have only been a handful of cases where I could say ‘that person is alive because of something I did’ and Marcos is definitely one that will stand out in my memory.’’