Colin Fielder, aged 39, was pronounced dead after suffering a heart attack in June last year – and he was clinically dead for 40 minutes before doctors revived him.
Mr Fielder can thank his near-miraculous recovery on a new device called an “autopulse” (pictured) – a mechanical CPR machine that can keep a patient’s blood oxygenated and flowing while doctors determine the cause of a heart attack and treat it.
The machine was developed in the US and is being trialed at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, where Mr Fielder was treated.
He’s one of seven heart attack patients at the hospital treated with the Autopulse – another patient survived being dead for up to 60 minutes.
Mr Fielder said he was given a choice in the ambulance about which hospital he wanted to go to: “For some reason, I said the Alfred, which is pretty lucky because they are the only one that has it”
Reports of people surviving long periods of “clinical” death have become increasingly common in recent years as medical procedures improve.
In 2011, a 30-year old Japanese woman was discovered dead in a forest one morning after apparently freezing to death some hours earlier.
She was treated with a machine similar to the autopulse, and her heart restarted more than six hours after she was found.
The unnamed patient left hospital three weeks later, “with slight left-sided weakness”, according to a report in the medical journal Resuscitation.