Man clincally dead for nearly 40 minutes still alive thanks to amazing procedure

By Kay Quinn, Healthbeat Reporter

KSDK -- You may have heard stories of people who've fallen through ice on frozen lakes and lived, despite being under water for minutes or hours. The cold water slowed their metabolism allowing them to survive.

That same concept is now being used in a controlled medical setting to improve the outcome for heart patients.

Meet Jim Wilson, a 59-year-old Washington, Missouri man who was clinically dead after suffering a massive heart attack on the morning of August 4.

"He was dead for 38 minutes. I said, 'How can you be dead and come back?'" says Jacque Wilson, Jim's wife.

But what's just as surprising is that on this day, Jim Wilson is walking and talking. He suffered no brain damage after doctors at St. John's Hospital in Washington spent those 38 minutes getting his heart beating again.

After Jim was stabilized, he was brought by ambulance to St. John's Mercy in St. Louis, to a cardiac catheterization lab, where a stent was placed in his artery. Then doctors began a unique form of therapy, which doctors and Wilson's family credit for his remarkable recovery.

"We were all relieved and then he said, 'but we have to worry about the brain. We're going to take him upstairs and put him in a cold water bath, which I totally would say that saved his brain,'" says Jacque.

The cold water bath technology is called Arctic Sun. This device cools the body from the outside in, much like wearing a wetsuit.

"What we know since 2005 is that by cooling these patients with therapeutic hypothermia or dropping their temperature within the body to between 32 and 34 degrees Celsius, which is about 91 degrees Fahrenheit, we can stop or minimize the damage to the brain," says Dr. George Kuchura, director of the St. John's Mercy Cardiac Catheterization Lab.

Normal body temperature is around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"My wife said my daughters, when they came in, they had to wear coats because it was so cold in my room and I'm laying there with just a small towel over me with fans blowing, taking me down to 91 degrees, so it's pretty amazing," says Jim Wilson.

After two days of cooling therapy, doctors began gradually warming Wilson.

"He said, 'Okay, if he opens his eyes and I hold two fingers up and he tells me there's two fingers he's okay,'" says Jacque. "He said he did it and he said there was two, then we just thought that was it, he was there."

Recently, the Wilsons returned to meet the doctor whose quick thinking led Wilson to be put on the Arctic Sun. Dr. Michael Cox is a critical care specialist who calls meetings like this the best reward of all.

"I often tell families it's one thing to survive the initial event, but it's fantastic when you survive the event but also then wake up afterwards and you're neurologically intact and your brain and everything else is working normally," says Dr. Michael Cox, a St. John's Mercy Critical Care Specialist and the doctor who decided to put Wilson on the Arctic Sun technology.

Wilson has no memory of the heart attack or his nine days in the hospital, but his family remains haunted by what he went through.

"We have him back and I thank God every day," says Jacque.

Wilson says he has no doubt his days spent on ice led to his amazing recovery.

"I think that Arctic Sun saved me more than anything," he says.

But this man who was once clinically dead also has a message for anyone who wakes up with chest pain.

"The most important thing out of this whole deal is that when you get up in the morning and you feel any discomfort at all around your heart don't think if you take some aspirin or something like that get to the hospital and get it checked out," says Wilson.

Many patients like Wilson never even make it to the hospital.

Over 300,000 people each year die from 'sudden cardiac death' in this country, meaning their heart attack was so severe it killed them before they could get to a hospital.