Doctors swing into action, then go back to lunch

By Jason Gruenauer | Posted: 9:40 PM, Nov 6, 2017 | Updated: 10:14 PM, Nov 6, 2017 | View Original Story

DENVER — You could call it the very definition of the old expression of being in “the right place at the right time” when several ER doctors saved a man’s life at a local Denver sandwich shop.

The doctors happened to be in town for a conference of other ER doctors. They were on a lunch break Monday afternoon at Snarf’s on Champa when the man walked in and collapsed.

“He went into cardiac arrest. His heart stopped beating, stopped pumping blood,” Dr. David Levy said.

Levy was alongside several of his former residents and a pair of emergency physicians from New Jersey, who all jumped into action.

“We did chest compressions. We shocked him with the AED,” he explained.

The man was without a pulse three separate times, but the team was able to regain it in time for EMTs to arrive and transport him to the hospital.

“Everyone expects this to happen in a hospital in a controlled environment, but when you’re there, and it happens on the floor of a restaurant it takes you by surprise,” Levy said. “He would have died if no one was there to intervene.”

As of Monday night, the man had survived the ordeal and was being treated in the intensive care unit.

And what did this group of hero-doctors do next?

“We washed our hands, sat down, and finished our lunch,” Levy said.

He would go on to win three separate awards that night as part of the convention, the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians.

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