Colo. ER Doctors Save Man from Cardiac Arrest During Lunch Break

The Wichita Eagle

Nov. 08—He sure picked the right spot to have a heart attack.

A man walked into a Denver sandwich shop Monday afternoon and collapsed—which just happened to be where several emergency room doctors in town for a convention were grabbing a quick bite to eat.

"He went into cardiac arrest. His heart stopped beating, stopped pumping blood," Dr. David Levy told the denverchannel.com.

Doctors who were at Snarf's on Champa immediately went to work, doing chest compressions and shocking the man with an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

The man was without a pulse three separate times, but the doctors working on him were able to regain it. He was taken to a hospital, where he is being treated in the intensive care unit.

"He would have died if no one was there to intervene," Levy said.

Other folks may have been so shaken by what just happened that they didn't want to eat. But not this bunch.

"We washed our hands, sat down, and finished our lunch," Levy said.