Hands-down winners: UK’s first hand transplant patient uses limb to save wife during heart attack

Advanced medical technology has allowed doctors to re-attach or transplant body parts damaged in an accident or by disease, using some unusual procedures like what they did with the hand of a Brazilian worker, the nose of an Indian boy and the penis of an American. When the patient recovers and could reuse again the limb is often the mark of a successful medical procedure.

However, in the case of British man, having a working hand transplant not only allowed Mark Cahill to live a normal life. The Telegraph reports that the 55-year-old recipient of the first hand transplant in UK in 2012 used that limb to save his wife’s life recently.

His 51-year-old wife, Sylvia, suffered a heart attack and Mark used the hand to perform chest compressions on her until the arrival of an ambulance. Sylvia fell asleep in bed after watching TV, but Mark heard her gasp. When he checked, she was not breathing, but her eyes were wide open.

He called emergency services which taught him how to give CPR. At first, his right transplanted hand held the phone for eight minutes while his left hand did the CPR. But when his left hand got tired, he switch the tasks.

Paramedics, upon arrival, used a defibrillator to resuscitate Sylvia who was clinically dead for about 19 minutes. Mark, a former Royal Marine had gout and infection which rendered his right hand functionless. An unknown donor gave him a right hand attached during an eight-hour surgery performed at the Leeds General Infirmary.

In Texas, inmates left their cell to save a prison guard suffering from a heart attack on June 23, reports the New York Daily News. The eight prisoners were from a holding cell at the District Courts Building in Weatherford.

The lone guard stationed at the next cell was joking with the inmates in handcuffs when he suddenly slumped over in his seat. Although the prisoners were shouting for help, since the rooms of other jail personnel were far, one inmate got their cell door opened and checked on the guard who had no pulse.

Deputies on the upper floor finally heard the noise and thought there was a prison riot. When they saw the situation, they herded the prisoners back into their cell, called 911 and performed CPR on the guard. When medics arrived, they used a defibrillator shock and revive the guard.

While prison officials acknowledged the prison breakout likely saved the guard’s life who could have been lifeless for minutes before other employees find him, they still reinforced the cell’s lock.

VIDEO: Inmates break free from cell to help ill jailer