NEW DELHI: When
Aasif Khan comes out of
Apollo hospital
on Friday, many may consider him a dead man walking. For, 12 days ago, the 22-year-old engineer from
Aligarh
suffered a massive
cardiac arrest
and his heart did not beat for nearly an hour.
The medical miracle that put Aasif back on his feet began with a stroke of luck: the cardiac arrest happened inside the hospital while doctors were examining him for acute chest pain. As soon as he collapsed, trauma specialists kept the blood supply running by administering continuous cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and shock to the heart using a defibrillator.
His heart revived after more than an hour. But as Aasif was being wheeled into the cath lab for an angiogram to locate the blood vessel clot that had caused the condition, he suffered another cardiac arrest. Doctors had no choice but to conduct the angiogram, remove the clot and place a stent in the vessel while administering CPR.