Patient's heart stops for 20 minutes during hip surgery

Orthopedic

A man is recovering after he was brought back to life during a July 4 hip surgery at Denver Health, NBC affiliate KUSA reported July 7.

Todd Brainard's heart stopped while surgeons were putting his hip socket together, and a vascular surgeon in the adjacent operating room rushed over to provide assistance, the report said. 

"We were obviously expecting things to run very smoothly, and it didn’t," Cyril Mauffrey, MD, Denver Health's head of orthopedics, said in the report.

Multiple physicians, residents and nurses did CPR and chest compressions for 20 minutes, and Mr. Brainard was revived.

"He was in the perfect place for this to happen," Mr. Brainard's wife, Summer, said in the report. "Everything, all the conditions around him. This happening at this moment was just a miracle that it happened the way that it did."

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