Dr. Oz helps save man’s life at airport
The television personality known simply as Dr. Oz gave details last week about a tense real-life scene in which he helped police save a man’s life at Newark Liberty International Airport as anxious spectators looked on.
The incident occurred late Monday night when Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Officer Jeffrey Croissant saw the 60-year-old man fall to the floor near a baggage claim area.
Croissant called for backup and began performing CPR on the unidentified man, who wasn’t breathing and didn’t appear to have a pulse, according to the Port Authority.
When another person came over to help, Croissant didn’t immediately recognize it was Mehmet Oz, the cardiac surgeon and longtime host of TV’s “Dr. Oz Show,” who happened to be nearby.
“The gentleman had face-planted, and there was a pool of blood like a murder scene,” Oz told The Associated Press. Oz said he tried to rouse him, but the man had no pulse and his face had begun to turn purple.
Croissant performed CPR on the man while Oz worked to clear his airway with a face pack and a tongue depressing oral airway device. Three other officers brought oxygen and a defibrillator for the man, who eventually regained a pulse and was taken to a hospital.
The defibrillator “diagnosed that his heart had stopped, as I had thought was the case when I couldn’t get a pulse,” Oz said. “It told us to step away. And you’ve seen those movies where the patient gets shocked and they jerk off the ground? That’s exactly what happened. Usually, the heart doesn’t start again … in this case, like the movies, his heart started.”