In most cases, death is permanent – when someone’s heart stops beating, it rarely begins again. But sometimes, the first responder can help bring a person back from death, even after the heart has stopped.
So, what was the longest time someone clinically died and returned to life?
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To understand how this happens, it is important to first define exactly what death is.
“Most in the case [doctors] Dr. Daniel Mark Rollston, an emergency medical doctor at Northwell Health in New York, says he is “clinically dead.”
When someone’s heart stops beating, all the cells in the body, and most importantly, the brain no longer receives fresh oxygenated blood. After about 5 minutes without oxygen, those cells begin to die. This is a process that cannot be reversed.
Another type of clinical death is brain death. This occurs when the brain is extremely damaged and loses control over basic life functions such as breathing and heartbeat.
Resuscitation method
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is designed to keep fresh blood flowing throughout the body and keep brain cells alive after cardiac death. By manually compressing the breast and taking rescue breaths, the first responder can help oxygenate cells for a short period of time, even if the heart is not beating alone. In most cases, CPR cannot restart the mind itself, but you can buy time for other techniques.
To make the heart beat alone again, the first responder uses a technique called defibrillation. This mimics the natural electrical signals used by applying external currents to the heart and the myocardium to contract. In some cases, these electrical signals can help reset the heart and beat again.
Under ideal conditions, these life support technologies can be relatively successful. According to the American Red Cross, hospitals have a survival rate after CPR of about 20%. These percentages drop when people undergo cardiac arrest outside the hospital, dropping to about 10%. This is because outside of healthcare settings, fewer people are trained in CPR, and response times are generally slower.
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“The sooner you get the better results,” explained Rolston.
However, even in the best case scenario, successful resuscitation after 30 minutes is rare, even if CPR is managed continuously.
“For the majority of people with very long periods of cardiac arrest, survival is pretty poor,” Rollston said. “If they don’t get someone back in 30 minutes, their chances of survival are pretty low at that point.”
Buy time with hypothermia
However, there is one notable exception to this rule. If cardiac arrest is combined with hypothermia. Hypothermia occurs when the nuclear temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius), which is in itself extremely dangerous, causing heart and lung damage, and ultimately death.
However, if the heart is already stopped on its own, hypothermia can actually have several advantages. Cold temperatures slow the body’s metabolism and prevent sensitive cells in the brain from dying after they run out of oxygen.
“When you get cold enough, it can protect you for a long time,” explained Dr. Samuel Tisserman, a professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, explaining that he is studying how hypothermia can be used as a treatment measure in cases of cardiac arrest caused by trauma. “There have been many reports of people who have been drowned in very cold water and survived underwater for more than an hour.”
The longest known and reported case of successful resuscitation after cardiac arrest and accidental hypothermia is a 31-year-old man who was resurrected 8 hours and 42 minutes later. A man whose temperature is already about 79 F (26 C) due to a summer thunderstorm experienced cardiac arrest, and nearby people immediately began administering CPR. This was maintained for over 3.5 hours. After the man was in the hospital, he was placed on a life support system that maintained fresh blood flow for five hours, eventually being warmed and resuscitated. Three months later, doctors reported that the man had fully recovered and had no sustained neurological damage.
How about reviving from brain death?
Heart death has a path to recovery, but brain death is another story. When a patient is declared brain dead, it means that their brains are unable to send signals to the body that control essential functions.
To declare brain death, doctors need to identify medical problems causing brain damage and rule out conditions that can cause symptoms similar to brain death. This process involves using MRI to imaging the brain, testing basic neurological functions such as pupil dilation, and checking whether the patient can breathe on his own.
Sometimes news articles appear about patients who are declared brain dead and have been off-living. So are these patients really rising from death?
Probably not. The definition of brain death is that brain death is not a state that can be reversed because the basic life support area of the brain is so damaged that it cannot be recovered. The most likely event that someone is likely to have recovered is that the original diagnosis of brain death was incorrect.
Dr. Robert M. Sado, a professor of surgery at the South Carolina Medical College, told Medscape in 2018. “I got an error saying that brain death was later found to be spontaneous,” he said.
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