Boy survives after 42 minutes underwater

The teenager jumped from a bridge into the Naviglio Canal (Picture: Google)

A teenage boy survived 42 minutes underwater in what was heralded as an ‘exception event’ by doctors.
The unnamed boy, 14, jumped into the Naviglio Canal from a bridge in the town of Cuggiono, west of Milan, Italy, at 4:53pm on 24 April, The Local reports.
When the teenager failed to come up to the surface, the friends he was with frantically searched the murky water, and called emergency services when they couldn’t find him.
A team of divers was dispatched and they finally pulled the 14-year-old’s body from the water at 5:32pm, 42 minutes after he had gone under.
He was rushed by helicopter to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital, where doctors treated him using Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, a procedure whereby an artificial lung outside the body is used to pump oxygenated blood through it.

 

The teenager was rushed by helicopter to San Raffaele hospital (Picture: Google)

Incredibly, the boy had made a full recovery within ten days. He had to have his right leg amputated below the knee due to circulation problems, however.
‘[The recovery was] an exceptional event,’ said Alberto Zangrillo, director of Anaesthesia and Resuscitation at San Raffaele.
‘The kind that makes us think that some parameters regarding survival in a state of hypoxia [reduced oxygen supply to the body] must be revised.’
Dr. Zangrillo credits the determination of the paramedics who were in the air ambulance with the teenager, and who continued to try and resuscitate him all the way to the hospital.
The boy’s mother told La Stampa his recovery was ‘miraculous’. His father thanked the ‘professionalism’ of the hospital staff.