RESTORATION OF LIFE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1872, 3 September 1918, Page 3

RESTORATION OF LIFE.

COLLAPSE DURING OPERATION. HEART MASSAGE EFFECTIVE. REMARKABLE CASE IN AUCKLAND. The efficiency of heart massage for the restoration of life in patients collapsing on the operatingtable is endorsed by Mr Garrick Robertson, of Auckland, in an article in the current issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal. “Although heart massage is fairly well known as a possible procedure,” he remarks, “I have not heard any personal reports of such cases, so I venture to think the record of these cases may he of interest to the profession in New Zealand.”

Mr Robertson states that lie has hacUseveral cases of heart massage during the last year or two, and he describes in detail a “striking example of its saving powers.” In this case, a sailor went to the Auckland Hospital with a septic thumb, hut otherwise apparently in good health. He was placed under a general anaesthetic, and the abscess was lapced. It was then noticed that the patient’s heart had stopped heating, and the respirations were dying away. Artificial respiration was started, and Mr Robertson, who happened to 1)0 in the hospital at the lime, was summoned. On arrival, he found that Iho man was quite white, and there were no heart sounds, neither had voluntary respiration been restored. The man seemed quite dead. Making the necessary surgical incision, Mr Robertson introduced his hand and grasped the heart firmly. Finding that there was no muscular movement in the heart, the surgeon squeezed it between his hand and the ribs several times, whereupon it gave a distinct, hut feeble, kick, followed by slow and feeble contractions, which soon became hounding and rapid. The wound was sewn up, and the patient put to bed. The patient remained in a very exeited rendition for 12 hours, hut two days after the operation lie was quite normal, but could not remember going to the hospital or anything that had happened during the two days. He made a complete recovery. The interest of the ease, as Mr Robertson emphasises in his paper, lies pariicnhirly in the fact that at the lowest ealeulalion the man must have been dead for three minutes, prohaidy live. In an earlier case of heart massage performed by Mr Robertson, the subject was a man on whom he was operating for appendicitis. This man did well, hut the result was not so striking as in the ease just described, for a very little time, elapsed between his heart stopping and the massage which re-started it. In a third ease in which this manoeuvre was tried, Mr Robertson was unsuccessful. “It will he seen that heart massage adds another efficient method of dealing with cases of sudden collapse on the operating table,” Mr Robertson remarks in concluding the article. “With the experiences recorded above 1 am (irmly convinced that Avhen the surgeon is sure that the heart has stopped there should he no excuse for not applying this procedure; hut I should like to emphasise the fact that this should only be done after failure to restore animation with (he usual restoratives, and, judging from the first ease, it would seem that there is no great hurry, for the heart wifi respond after a comparatively long latent period.”