US woman survives 45 minutes with no pulse

INQUIRER.net PHOTO

BOCA RATON, Florida – A Florida mother is home and tending to her new infant less than a month after surviving without a pulse for 45 minutes following complications from a routine cesarean section.

A spokesman for Boca Raton Regional Hospital told The Associated Press on Sunday that a team of medical workers spent three hours attempting to revive the woman after a rare amniotic fluid embolism.

Spokesman Thomas Chakurda said the doctors were preparing to pronounce her death when a blip on a monitor indicated a heartbeat. Despite going 45 minutes without a pulse, she suffered no brain damage during the Sept. 23 ordeal.

“We had called a code that lasted for three hours. She essentially spontaneously resuscitated when we were about to call the time of death,” said Thomas Chakurda, the hospital spokesman.

Doctors had called the family into the operating room and told them there was nothing more they could do for 40-year-old Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro.

Graupera-Cassimiro gave birth to a healthy daughter before amniotic fluid entered her bloodstream and heart and created a vacuum, stopping circulation. Doctors say the condition is often fatal.

Chakurda said the woman’s survival is a story of two miracles — her resuscitation and the fact that she survived without serious brain damage.

Medical workers used shock paddles and chest compressions throughout the emergency to try and restore heart beat and circulation, Chakurda said.

“Today she is the picture of health,” he said.

He said her survival is a case of “divine providence.”

Graupera-Cassimiro did not return a phone message left by The Associated Press on Sunday.