Fabrice Muamba. Do you know the name, and the man behind the name? What about Frank Pantridge? What connections are there exactly between these men? Like to know? Please, read on.
It was 43 minutes into the 2012 FA Cup quarter-final match between Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur which was being played at White Hart Lane, when Fabrice Muamba, one of the players on the Bolton team collapsed. As an eyewitness described:
…Suddenly, [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][he just] fell like a tree trunk. He didn’t put his arms out to break his fall, or anything, he just dropped.
Fabrice Muamba had just suffered a sudden cardiac arrest, and consequently, his heart would stop beating for the next 78 minutes! (that’s an awfully long time for the body, and especially the brain to be without oxygenated blood).
He was quickly surrounded by others frantically trying to revive him, and while a heart that has stopped beating needs at least 300 Joules of electric energy to be jolted back to life; Fabrice would receive 4,500 Joules between the time he fell to the time he got to the hospital, all thanks to the invention of one man more than fifty years prior. Enter Professor Frank Pantridge.
Who was Professor Frank Pantridge?
Frank Pantridge was a physician and cardiologist from Northern Ireland who transformed emergency medicine and paramedic services with the invention of the portable defibrillator – the same device that was used on Fabrice Muamba – in 1965, installing the first version in a Belfast ambulance.
Because Frank Pantridge’s portable defibrillator has been used to save millions of lives around the world has led to him being called the Father of Emergency Medicine.
But even before he began his medical career, he had fought in World War Two, where he received the Military Cross and survived brutal conditions in a Japanese POW camp, and served much of his captivity as a slave labourer on the Burma Railway.
He died in 2004, but his contribution to cardiology lives on.
Portable defibrillators are used throughout the world to save lives today, and the process emergency departments still use to treat out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is referred to as the Belfast Protocol, which is based on the outcome of a series of studies Professor Pantridge started in 1957, that many deaths will result from cardiac arrest except the patient is given emergency treatment before being admitted to hospital.
And that’s how Professor Frank Pantridge, who at that time had been dead for almost a decade, saved Fabrice Muamba’s life four years ago today through his invention – the portable defibrillator.
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