Alone and having heart attack, man saves self

PERTH (AFP) — Alone at a health clinic in a small, remote seaside settlement in Australia, a 44-year-old nurse sensed he was having a heart attack and sprang into action, saving his own life, a report said.

The man, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, experienced severe chest pain and dizziness while he was the sole medical professional on duty at a nursing post in Coral Bay, more than 1,000 kilometers from Perth, the capital of Western Australia, said the account published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

With the next medical facility 150 kilometers away and no one else around to help, he hooked himself up to an electrocardiogram (EKG), which showed a complete heart block that may have been due to an evolving heart attack.

The man then performed another EKG on himself, which confirmed the diagnosis of a heart attack.

He e-mailed the results to a doctor via the Emergency Telehealth Service (ETS), and found an emergency doctor to talk with him via real-time video.

Then, he inserted intravenous (IV) lines in both of his own arms and self-administered drugs, including aspirin, blood thinners, painkillers and a clot-dissolving drug called tenecteplase.

“He attached his own defibrillator pads and prepared adrenaline, atropine, and amiodarone, which are drugs to treat heart rhythm problems, “said the report.

As it turned out, the clotbusting drugs worked, and the heart attack subsided.

He was flown the next day to a cardiology unit in Perth, a stent was inserted in the coronary artery that had grown blocked, and he went home two days later.

Experts said his extreme, do-it-yourself, MacGyver-like approach would not be recommended for most people.