Doctors perform CPR on man who collapsed in the middle of road; ‘A real miracle’
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ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) — A St. Louis man is thanking the doctors who rushed to save him after he collapsed in the middle of the road in the Central West End.
Marty Levine regularly rides his bike. On one September day, Levine said his regular route through Forest Park was blocked, so he took a different path that took him past Barnes Jewish Hospital.
He was on his bike at the light on Barnes Jewish Hospital Plaza near Kingshighway when he collapsed.
“I was driving with my kids and my dad out of Forest Park,” said Liza Dunn, who happens to be a doctor. “I saw Marty on a bicycle, I looked down and then I looked back up and he was on the ground in traffic.”
Dunn got out of the car and ran over to help. She said another ER nurse who happened to be visiting St. Louis and who also saw him collapsed was already doing CPR.
Dunn, who used to be an ER doctor at BJC, called a former co-worker for help.
“I heard something about a man down, blue, something about a bike and I was like ‘Whoa whoa whoa, Liza, slow down,'” said ER doctor Bridgette Svancarek.
Svancarek and several other doctors, nurses, and ER techs ran about a block from the entrance of the emergency room to find Levine in the middle of the road not breathing. They helped carry him to a nearby parking lot and continued CPR for about seven minutes followed by a shock to the heart using a defibrillator.
“On the next pulse check he had his pulse back,” said Svancarek. “Cardiac arrest survival in and of itself is low so when we do get a pulse back that’s remarkable.”
Doctors called St. Louis City Fire Department for assistance and rushed Levine on a stretch through a back entrance of BJC. Shortly after, he was able to open his eyes and talk.
“I’m extremely grateful for not only hospital staff but bystanders that came to my aid. That’s the key,” said Levine. “They didn’t just drive by, they stopped, cared enough to see what happened, and went to action.”
Doctors said Levine’s chances of survival that day were less than 10%.
“What they told me was a piece of plaque broke loose and got stuck in a narrow section of an artery around my heart,” said Levine.
He’s in remission from Leukemia, but said doctors don’t believe that had anything to with him going into cardiac arrest.
“This is like a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Marty is a real miracle,” said Dunn.
Doctors said this is a reminder of how important it is for everyone to learn CPR.
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