The taxi driver's miraculous survival

Yaşar Demirel, a taxi driver of 30 years who suffered a heart attack behind the wheel in Istanbul, survived thanks to an extraordinary rescue operation. After dropping off his passenger, Yaşar Demirel went to a taxi stand to ask his colleagues for help, and his heart stopped at a hospital just 100 meters away.

He was treated with CPR and a defibrillator for a full 30 minutes. During the moments when doctors were racing against time, there was no pulse at all. Hopes for the father of five were fading, and the thought of taking him to the morgue began to prevail. However, a miracle occurred, and a small rhythm suddenly appeared on the monitor. Yaşar Demirel, who was quickly taken into surgery, had his heart stop once more. After a successful angiography and stent procedure performed by doctors who never gave up, Yaşar Demirel was discharged 3 days later and walked out of the hospital with his memory fully intact, despite the long duration of the incident.

Yaşar Demirel, a 30-year veteran taxi driver living in Yenibosna, Bahçelievler, was unaware that he would defy death when he set off on June 1 to drop off a passenger he picked up in Gaziosmanpaşa at the Vadistanbul shopping mall. The father of five began to experience severe chest pain while driving. His body was covered in sweat. Although he realized something was wrong, he neither stopped his taxi, which was his livelihood, nor left his passenger on the road. That was until he dropped his passenger off at their destination... When he arrived at Vadistanbul, he went to a nearby taxi stand and asked his colleagues for help. His colleague, who put Yaşar Demirel in the passenger seat, rushed to a private hospital 100 meters away.

While necessary tests were being performed in the Emergency Department due to a suspected heart attack, Yaşar Demirel's heart stopped. From that moment on, a rare race for life began. A Code Blue was called at the hospital. Doctors went on alert. For approximately 30 minutes, CPR was performed continuously, and he was intervened with a defibrillator nearly 30 times. Oxygen support was never interrupted. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Batur Kanar and Specialist Dr. Hasan Burak İşleyen were racing against time. All efforts to bring back Yaşar Demirel, whose heart had stopped, were initially unsuccessful. Hopes were fading, and concerns were growing. There was no pulse at all. The thought of taking him to the morgue began to prevail with the assumption that the patient had been lost.

However, just at that moment, a miracle occurred and a small rhythm formed. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Vefik Yazıcıoğlu, who noticed this sign of life that would gift Yaşar Demirel a second spring, said, "Friends, I believe this patient will return," and asked his team to continue CPR while simultaneously ensuring the patient's transfer to the operating room. An angiography was performed to understand the situation. Just as he was being placed on the operating table, Yaşar Demirel's heart stopped once more. Prof. Yazıcıoğlu described those moments: "Our morale was low, but we continued. It is difficult to enter a vessel in a heart that is not working. Because you cannot feel the pulse. We continued the angiography while the massage was ongoing. We realized that the main artery was blocked at its root. And we opened that vessel. During the intervention, his rhythm suddenly returned to normal. This was an extraordinary situation. His blood pressure also returned to normal. We placed a stent after the balloon."

News Source: 12punto