96 Minutes Without a Heart Beat

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 | by Pat's Picks

Something called a capnograph, which measures the amount of carbon dioxide in each breath, has made it easier to survive a sudden cardiac arrest, at least until help arrives. In today’s paper, the Wall Street Journal interviews a man whose heart stopped for 96 minutes before he was brought back. He survived, in large part, because the men who came to his rescue continued to perform CPR well after the 20-minute window previously thought to be upper limit people can go with a pulse. They used a capnograph to confirm that their efforts were successful in getting oxygen to circulate in the blood.