How would one react after returning alive from fiercely fought battle in an “almost death-like situation”. On November 9, Dr Harshvardhan Choudhary had this ghastly “near-death” experience. Dr Harshvardhan along with his colleagues Dr Shailesh Kachole (ENT surgeon) and Dr Nilesh Mehta, a well-known cardiologist from Australia, were enjoying a game of badminton at Mahananda Nagar Badminton Hall. Things were cruising ahead and they were poking fun at each other after sweating it out at badminton-court.
In order to capture these cherish moments, Dr Kachole asked everyone to pose for a click. That’s where things took ugly turn. Dr Kachole said, “I was sharing some light-hearted moments with everyone while taking the snapshots. I could not imagine in my wildest dream what was going to unfold next.”
“Dr Harshvardhan was standing in the extreme right corner leaning against his friend. He was looking hale and hearty until I noticed his unusual drooping eyes lids and tottering legs. Suddenly, he went down with a thud on the ground. I and my friend Dr Nilesh along knew that he just had cardiac arrest. He had no pulse and had stopped breathing,” he narrated.
Dr Kachole continued, “Though we belong to a fraternity which is labelled as gods, but an incident like this can scare the wits out of anyone as we were all running helter-skelter without a clue. Then, we both decided that we must give him CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), a medical technique used to revive for a person who has just suffered a cardiac arrest. I gave a mouth-to-mouth respiration while Nilesh gave him chest compressions tirelessly for the next 30 minutes.
My wife and others called the ambulance and rushed him to a nearby hospital. We all grouped ourselves in different teams and put up painstaking efforts to bring him back to life.” Finally, our endeavours bore fruits as we noticed a rebound in his heart beats and other vital organs started working satisfactorily. He was later shifted to Medanta Hospital, Indore for better treatment and now he is recuperating at home,” he added.
“He had a plaque in his artery which ruptured on that day on the badminton court. It had formed a clot, and then led to ventricular fibrillation and caused cardiac arrest. Usually, such series of events have high mortality rate; however, we are happy to pull him out of the jaws of death,”said Dr Nilesh Mehta, Intervention Cardiologist MD, DM Cardio, Melbourne, Australia
HOW CPR WORKS?
Dr Shailesh Kachole, ENT surgeon, Ujjain
In this technique, mouth-to-mouth breathing along with continuous chest compressions are given to patients for about 10 to 15 minutes till the patient regains conscious. A ratio of 15:2 is maintained that is 15 times chest compressions to 2 times artificial respiration. In the absence of knowledge of this life-saving technique, many die an untimely death. This emergency technique must be learnt by one and all.