North Carolina man survives for 40 minutes with no pulse

A man whose pulse stopped for 40 minutes after suffering a cardiac arrest has miraculously survived thanks to the efforts of emergency workers.

John Ogburn, 36, from North Carolina, paid tribute to the police and medics who brought him back from the dead by refusing to give up on him.

The father-of-three collapsed while working on his laptop near his Charlotte home on 26 June.

Two police officers who happened to be nearby were the first on the scene, arriving within a minute of 911 being dialled.

Lawrence Guiler and Nikolina Bajic administered CPR for over 40 minutes, despite Ogburn showing no signs of life.

Firefighters arrived at the scene shortly, as did a nurse, who also happened to be nearby, and attempted to restart his pulse using a defibrillator.

Together, they administered CPR 200 times, but it was only when medics arrived after about 40 minutes that his pulse started working again.

“My energy level hasn’t been what it was before, but that might be because my routine changed a bit,” Ogburn told the BBC.

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“The combination of [the chest compressions and an internal defibrillator] is a little sore, but if that’s all I got to complain about, then I’m doing really well.”

“In certain time frames they’re supposed to call it, and they didn’t, they continued to try to save me,” he said. “And I am just so grateful for that and for them.”

His wife, Sarah, told the Charlotte Observer that the ordeal was “terrifying.”

“When I got there, I was taken into a room with two police officers, ER doctors, nurses and clergy. Basically, they said: ‘We don’t know what’s gonna happen.'”

Dr Michael Kurz, associate professor at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, said: “The evidence does tell us that for every minute the heart is stopped and that high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not conducted, there is a 10 per cent reduction in survival.

“This case in North Carolina highlights the value of CPR in extending that window of survivability. Immediate CPR can double or treble chances of survival from cardiac arrest. Most US employees are not prepared to handle cardiac emergencies, and that needs to change.”