FOUR DOCTORS SAVE CO-FLYER AFTER MID-AIR HEART ATTACK

PATNA: A 59-year-old woman who collapsed after a heart attack mid-air on an Indigo airlines aircraft on Saturday evening was resuscitated by four doctors on board and was later shifted to a hospital where she is in a stable condition, said an airline official on Sunday.

The incident took place on Indigo flight 6E 695 that took off from Delhi at 6pm en-route to Patna on Saturday. The woman, Suman Agarwal, developed chest pain around 35 minutes after take-off and fell unconscious, her husband Pramod Agarwal said.

“The flight crew made an announcement calling out doctors or nurses on board. Four of them — three men and a woman — took control of the situation as they worked with the Indigo crew to save my wife,” he said.

One of the doctors, Dr Abhishek Kumar Sinha, said: “The passenger was unconscious... Since we did not have her medical history, so, to rule out hypoglycaemia (low glucose or sugar level), I asked an airhostess to give her water, dissolved with sugar,” he said. Another doctor, Dr Nikita Shrivastava, who helped, said: “I put her on external oxygen and was able to put a cannula, which is difficult to do even in a hospital in such cases.” She added that once the line was set up, the team administered several lifesaving drugs. Dr Mallikarjun from New Delhi and Dr Atish, a paediatrician from the army hospital, were the other two doctors who helped save the woman.

“We got a priority landing for the aircraft due to medical emergency,” said the airline official.