A ‘HUMAN icicle’ who doctors were convinced had drunkenly froze to death was saved by 5,000 volt electric shocks.

Vladimir Yakovlevich from Siberia was in a state of "extreme hypothermia" when he was rushed to Krasnoyarsk regional hospital.

Vladimir said: “I don’t remember how it happened. I woke up here, nothing hurts.”

Resuscitator Dmitry Mitsukov: “The patient was icy to the touch. Snowflakes did not melt on his face.

“His peripheral pulse could not be felt, only the faintest traces with a stethoscope.”

Nurse Irina Rymsha said: “It was impossible to imagine that this man could survive, but we did everything to try and save him.”

A mobile heat gun was used to warm his body which led to a ventricular fibrillation of the heart.

“Fibrillation is a circulatory arrest, a condition that very quickly leads to the death of the patient,” said a hospital source.

MEDICAL MIRACLE

The doctors started resuscitation - indirect heart massage and defibrillation.

A stopped heart cannot be restarted with defibrillation, said the hospital.

A powerful electric shock of 5,000 volts is only effective in a quivering heart, as in this case - and it happened 24 times, says the hospital.

“The current does not restart a stalled heart, but reloads the failing work of the organ.

“If a healthy person receives a shock of 5,000 volts, they may die on the spot.”

By comparison in the use of execution by electrocution, a jolt of 2,000 volts is typically used, destroying the brain, followed by shocks with a lessor voltage.

“In the case of this frozen patient, the task seemed impossible,” said the hospital.

'ICY TO TOUCH'

“After 15 minutes of resuscitation a threadlike pulse appeared in the peripheral arteries, but the heart refused to work - the rhythm after the electric shock recovered only for a few seconds, and then fibrillation occurred again.

“It was like trying again and again to start the frozen motor of a car.”

Second resuscitator Dmitry Krivkov said: “We knew that the classical rules of resuscitation do not apply to patients with severe hypothermia.”

In total the man was given 24 discharges of 5,000 volts - we still didn’t believe that we could save the heart of this man who froze into an icicle.

“Only when the gap between the discharges of the defibrillator increased to five minutes did the unbelievable become reality.”

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A day later he began to breathe by himself, and 48 hours later the ice man began to speak.

His first words were from a children’s rhyme: “The puppy looked at the white snow and could not understand anything…'"

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