Dozens Perform CPR for 96 Minutes to Help Save SCA Victim

Clasped hands

Mar. 15, 2011 - When Howard Snitzer collapsed of sudden cardiac arrest outside a convenience store in Goodhue, Minn., a town so small it doesn’t have a streetlight, dozens of strangers lined up to perform CPR to help save his life. His rescuers, including volunteer firefighters, police, a corrections officer, and squads from neighboring towns, worked feverishly for 96 minutes until an emergency helicopter dispatched from the Mayo Clinic, some 35 miles away, arrived with more sophisticated equipment.

The paramedic in charge of the medevac crew, not wanting to believe the advice of an emergency room doctor who had arrived on the scene and said it was too late, contacted Dr. Roger White at Mayo. A clinical expert on out-of-hospital cardiac and resuscitation, Dr. White provided remote medical guidance. He called for a double dose of a heart drug to get the heart out of fibrillation and bring it back to a normal rhythm. A source from Mayo also credits a ZOLL M Series^® CCT defibrillator with "figuring very prominently" into the rescue by providing the end-tidal carbon dioxide obtained.