Victor Carlos, a marathon runner and a father of two girls, didn't breathe for a month. He had the aid of modern technology. For a month, doctors used EMCO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a system in which the patient's respirator is turned down, a pump draws blood from the heart through a tube, and the carbon doixide is taken from it in an oxygenation machine, and the resulting oxygen is pumped back into the heart. It's works as a lung without the patient having to breathe. "And what we see on the X-ray is the lungs basically collapsed down to nothing," said Dr. Ashtok Babu. After about four weeks, Carlos's lungs opened up by themselves. By that time, he had lost more than 30 pounds. He could hardly walk. Now, a year later, he is going on more than 20 mile runs.
This is modern medicine and technology at it's finest. Not only did the guy live through not breathing for a month, he's back to his old self, and he's running considerable distances. This is a miraculous story that gives the average reader hope. Medicine and technology are advancing faster and faster every year. For thousands of years, the greatest innovation was the wheel. In the past 40 years, we've gone from PONG to the Wii. In the past 15 years, we've gone from flip phones to the iPhone. This article was written as an insight into the world of modern medicine and ingenuity.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/11/health/miracle-marathoner-carlos/index.html?hpt=us_t4
What does collapsing a persons lungs and letting them open themselves up do for them! It seems as if there was nothing wrong with him, but doctors wanted to try this new experiment. It's a really good thing this experiment didn't have any complications.
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