A 34-YEAR-OLD woman came back to life in Nicosia’s Makarios hospital after her heart stopped for 15 minutes while she was undergoing a Caesarian, doctors said.
The heart failure came about following massive hemorrhaging which the woman experienced during the caesarian delivery of her fifth child.
“It really was a hemorrhage of massive dimensions. It was a hemorrhage which we were not able to control, even though we have a great deal of experience [in this field] at the Makarios hospital,” said Dr Stavros Neophytou, the Director of the Gynecology and Maternity ward at the hospital.
The 34 year old woman had previously had four of her children, two of whom were twins, delivered by caesarian section. The delivery of the fifth child did not go as smoothly as the previous four however due to the massive hemorrhage.
At the Makarios Hospital’s Gynecological and Maternity Ward the Director of the ward takes over the proceedings in the delivery room during critical or difficult situations. Neophytou, who has worked at the hospital since 1981, and who said that in his experience he had encountered many such instances, made it clear that this instance was “completely different”.
“The woman had lost nearly all her blood,” he said. Blood transfusions from two veins, not just the normal one, were ongoing and 40 packs of blood were used in the process of the operation. Doctors estimated that she had her entire blood capacity changed six times during the course of incident.
Her blood had lost the ability to coagulate (clot) and doctors were preparing coagulants and calling in other specialists, when her heart suddenly stopped and the cardiogram flat-lined. Doctors applied electroshocks to attempt to restart her heart but to no avail.
Subsequently they began to massage her heart and, after 10 to 15 minutes, it started to beat again once more.
The hemorrhaging continued however and the operation lasted for another three hours before her condition was brought under control and the bleeding stopped. She was then transferred to the intensive care unit of Nicosia’s General Hospital as doctors were concerned that she may have suffered brain damage as a result of having lost so much and having her heart stop for 15 minutes.
Fortunately however, the woman suffered no brain damage and both she and her baby were fine. They were both transferred back to the Makarios hospital where they were held for observation. The incident occurred last week and was first reported in Fileleftheros newspaper.
