Woman saved twice by ‘hero’ doctors
Spanish visitor revives her after heart attack, then surgical pioneer performs operation
The life of a woman was saved twice after she had a heart attack at an airport where a Spanish cardiologist happened to be waiting for his flight.
The 53-year-old woman, surnamed Chen, suffered a cardiac arrest at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport, in Hubei province, while waiting at a China Airlines gate with her husband and daughter in February.
An onlooker’s scream attracted the attention of Eduard Quintana, a cardiovascular surgeon who was travelling back to Spain. He gave first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to Chen, bringing her back to life before a medical team arrived.
The surgeon from Hospital Clinic Barcelona was hailed a hero by online observers in China.
Chen was later diagnosed with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a disease characterised by a thickened wall between the left and right ventricles that stops the heart from taking in and pumping out enough blood.
Around the time the story of her life being saved by the Spanish doctor went viral, reports revealed that Quintana was in China for training with one of the country’s best cardiologist teams, which specialises in her condition. The team from Wuhan Tongji Hospital, led by Professor Wei Xiang, reportedly invented transapical beating-heart myectomy, a minimally invasive surgical method targeting Chen’s problem.
Chen contacted Wei via a telemedicine app, and on March 11 Wei’s team removed the enlarged part of her heart muscle through a 5cm incision. Chen has been recovering well, and was up and about five days after the surgery, according to mainland media outlet Jimu News.
Quintana sent his best wishes to her via Wei’s team.
Chen gave two pennant banners to thank Quintana, Wei and the medical team. “It was life-saving destiny,” she said of her good luck in meeting two topnotch cardiologists by chance.
China has promoted CPR training among the public in recent years, as fewer than 1 per cent of Chinese people know how to give the simple but effective life-saving procedure. The success rate of CPR in reviving people in out-of-hospital heart attacks on the mainland is less than 1 per cent, compared with 10 per cent in many developed countries.
Quintana praised the professional reaction of members of China Airlines staff who contacted the medical team in time and looked after other passengers well. He told Jiupai News he hoped the incident would show more people the value of CPR training.