Aussie doctors bring woman back from the dead

0

LIVED TO TELL THE TALE: Tanasio (centre) along with son Max, daughter Ella and Sergeant Mark Robertson (behind) from the Victoria Police smiling from her hospital bed in Melbourne. — AFP photo

SYDNEY, New South Wales: An Australian woman has lived to tell the tale after being brought back to life from being clinically dead for 42 minutes, doctors said yesterday.

Mother-of-two Vanessa Tanasio, 41, was rushed to Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne last week after a major heart attack, with one of her main arteries fully blocked.

She went into cardiac arrest and was declared clinically dead soon after arrival.

Doctors refused to give up and used a compression device called a Lucas 2 – the only one of its kind in Australia – to keep blood flowing to her brain while cardiologist Wally Ahmar opened an artery to unblock it.

Once unblocked, Tanasio’s heart was shocked back into a normal rhythm.

“(I used) multiple shocks, multiple medications just to resuscitate her,” Ahmar said.

“Indeed this is a miracle. I did not expect her to be so well.”

Tanasio said she had no history of heart conditions and was grateful to be alive. — AFP