His heart stopped for 19 hours… A child baffles doctors after his pulse returns
The family of a 4-year-old boy was almost resigned to saying goodbye to him after all attempts to revive him by doctors failed, following his heart stopping for 19 hours.
However, a baffling surprise occurred for the doctors at the Colorado Children’s Hospital in the United States, when the child’s heart pulse returned.
According to NBC News, Carter McDaniel’s heart started beating again on its own after a 19-hour stoppage. At a time when doctors could not find a scientific explanation for this, his parents considered that “God was behind this”.
Carter developed a fever on April 8th, his mother initially thought it was just a cold. However, the boy’s condition worsened the next day, his feet and hands became cold, his mouth turned blue, dark circles appeared around his eyes, and he struggled to breathe.
Subsequently, Carter’s mother went to the hospital and, during tests, the child suffered a cardiac arrest. Doctors attempted, in vain, to resuscitate him.
According to doctors, McDaniel’s condition was due to an infection from Group A streptococcus.
Group A streptococcus can cause various infections, such as sore throats to scarlet fever, while Carter developed sepsis, a severe response to infection in the body.
Doctors informed the child’s parents, after placing him on extracorporeal life support, which pumps blood through an artificial lung, that “it was a matter of time before the life support machine stopped working”, but the boy’s pulse returned after 19 hours.
Nevertheless, the child is still undergoing kidney dialysis and ventilation, and has also undergone multiple skin grafts after his skin was severely damaged by the infection.
Carter’s parents confirmed that he remains under medical care in the hospital, with no date for his discharge yet determined.
