British woman who got lost in snow revived after six hours in cardiac arrest
“I can’t remember anything about that weekend,” said Audrey Mash, a 34-year-old British woman who was revived by Spanish doctors after spending more than six hours in cardiac arrest.
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The woman, who works as an English teacher in Barcelona, was trekking on November 3 in the Catalan Pyrenees in Girona when a snowstorm caught her off guard.
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She suffered hypothermia, falling unconscious before entering cardio-respiratory arrest.
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Having been rescued six hours later, she was finally revived in the Vall d’Hebron hospital thanks to the coordinated efforts of the fire service, the Medical Emergency Service, and the staff at the hospital.
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Thanks to a number of clues – including phone calls and photos that Mash had sent to her friends during the trek – a fire crew managed to reach the area where she was lost at around 3.40 pm.
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The woman, who at that moment was registering a body temperature of 18ºC, was taken to the Vall d’Hebron hospital by medical helicopter.
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On arrival at 5.44 pm, the patient was put on an extracorporeal oxygenation machine, which does the job of the heart and lungs by extracting blood for oxygenation before sending it back into an artery.
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The blood is also warmed during the process, helping to increase body temperature.
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“This is an exceptional case on a global scale,” Eduard Argudo, a doctor from the Vall d’Hebron hospital, said at a press conference on Thursday.
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“It is the longest cardiac arrest ever recorded in Spain.”