A garbage collector, who was thought to have died of a heart attack, was resuscitated while his body was being lifted. It is an incredible story that we are telling you today.
Miracle or mystery of the human body?
Declared dead after a heart attack, a garbage collector came back to life in his… body bag.
The scene took place on the morning of March 29 in Neuilly-sur-Marne (Seine-Saint-Denis), when the 66-year-old man had just collapsed shortly after taking his service.
Declared dead, he “resurrects” without his body bag
“ He did not have time to start that he felt unwell ”, thus tells AFP Sepur, the employer of the miraculous.
” Colleagues from the Neuilly-sur-Marne agency performed heart massage before help arrived ,” says the company specializing in waste treatment.
Immediately on site, the Samu de Seine-Saint-Denis teams immediately took charge of the sixty-year-old by providing him with “ prolonged cardiopulmonary resuscitation of more than 50 minutes taking into account the age and the presence of factors of good prognosis “, explains Professor Frédéric Adnet, medical director of Samu 93.
But just as rescuers thought it was too late and there was nothing more to be done, the man’s heart mysteriously restarted to everyone’s amazement.
“ It was when the body was lifted that the rescue team realized that he was still alive ,” confirms Sepur.
Thirty minutes after being declared dead, “ the police indicated that there were signs of the patient’s life. We dispatched a team and we found that there was a heart that was beating efficiently and we therefore transported it to intensive care at Montfermeil hospital , ”explains Professor Adnet.
“ It is an exceptional thing, I had not yet had a case in my career ”, confesses the latter.
Commonly called the “Lazarus phenomenon” – in reference to the character of Lazarus of Bethany who was resurrected by Jesus according to biblical tradition – this spectacular “resurrection” remains rare and doctors are struggling to explain it.
“ The explanatory hypotheses are not yet convincing but, nevertheless, we think that when we do intensive resuscitation and the heart does not restart and we disconnect the patient, we suddenly modify the intrathoracic pressure regime”, underlines Frédéric Adnet .
” The interruption of resuscitation can therefore allow the heart to regain effective activity “, but ” looking at the literature, we see that there are no cases where the patients came out of it alive “, tempers the ‘interested.
On the side of Sepur, a psychological unit has been set up to help the garbage collector’s colleagues who have experienced a real ” emotional lift “. As for the latter, he remains today in a “ desperate state ”.
