First Aid Corps

Two doctors from Long Island are credited with saving the life of a man at Kennedy Airport.

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He went into cardiac arrest inside terminal 4 Wednesday night and the doctors came to the rescue, despite some challenges.

“Where are the AEDs? Why isn’t it more available to the public? Why can’t we find it, why can’t we see it?” said Dr. Bruce Decter, a cardiologist.

They are life-saving questions Dr. Bruce Decter asks as to the whereabouts of the automatic external defibrillators or AEDs.

One of them was critically needed at JFK’s terminal 4 after a passenger suddenly collapsed and started to turn blue.

“I felt the pulse. I listened for breathing. I found none. I started the CPR,” Dr. Decter said.

With Dr. Scott Danoff, a dentist at his side, Dr. Decter also asks someone to call 911 and for the AED.

“I really repeated, ‘Where’s the AED?’” Dr. Decter said.

“I was thinking about it the whole time, all during the chest compressions, you’re looking around to see who is coming with an AED and there was nobody coming in,” said Dr. Scott Danoff, a dentist.

A Port Authority Police officer, who also responded, ran to get a portable device according to the doctors.

It’s unknown where he retrieved the AED.

“But by that time, the patient was revived,” Dr. Decter said.

“It was nowhere to be found, and the chances are it is hidden behind some piece of equipment or some barrier or some x-ray machine they use for security purposes,” Dr. Danoff said.

The private company that manages terminal 4 did not respond to Eyewitness News’ calls for comment or request to see the placement of the AEDs.

The doctors say they should be more visible.

“Maybe put it on a column somewhere, on a wall, but maybe put a one food wide red stripe going up 10 feet,” Dr. Danoff said.

“It was the most frustrating thing not to have that device, and I find we were very lucky that he survived,” Dr. Decter said.

Port Authority Officials say that there are defibrillators in terminal 4 and that many of them were placed there with an expansion of the program in 2006.

Ken McCauley knows he is lucky to be alive. And his doctors agree.

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“I’m just blessed and thankful to be here,” McCauley said.

Ken McCauley the Survivor

On Dec. 3, McCauley, 53, went into sudden cardiac arrest.

He was at a spin-cycling class at the Salem YMCA. “I was feeling pretty good,” he said this week reflecting back on that day.

It was the 5:30 a.m. class that McCauley — who works in the finance department at LewisGale Medical Center — had been attending every Wednesday and Friday since the beginning of the year. An avid runner since his doctor recommended exercise at age 48, McCauley began taking the class after his knees started bothering him. He still ran four days a week, and completed the Star City Half Marathon in November.

The class, which had about 10 participants, was on its third push as they peddled up an imaginary hill with the tension high on their stationary bikes. That’s when McCauley blacked out, falling off his bike and hitting the back of his head.

“I just remember a feeling of white. I felt everything blur into white and I remember reaching down to adjust the tension back on my bike,” he said.

After that, McCauley knows only what he has been told happened.

Laura Hart, a physician assistant who happened to be riding on the bike next to McCauley, checked for a pulse. She didn’t detect one.

The instructor ran for the facility’s Automated External Defibrillator. Then Hart and another class participant, Dr. Nathan Stephens, followed the instructions for using the defibrillator.

“The AED said to shock,” recalled Stephens, a Salem dentist. “We cleared him and administered the shock, and he immediately came to. He came off of the floor a little bit and said, ‘What’ — that was it. We got a pulse immediately from him.”

McCauley said he strongly believes that, without the AED, he would have died. Evidence supports that theory. While people who go into cardiac arrest do survive with basic CPR chest compressions, research has shown that the survival rate doubles if an AED is used properly, said Dr. David Sane, chief of cardiology at Carilion Clinic.

Sane did not treat McCauley but said the use of an AED is “clearly associated with improved outcomes.”

In McCauley’s case, the AED “most likely saved his life,” said Dr. Richard Konstance, a cardiologist at Heart of Virginia Cardiology medical practice on Electric Road and the physician who treated McCauley at LewisGale.

McCauley said he hopes that by sharing his story he will bring awareness to the benefit of AEDs and recognition to those who acted to save his life.

“I know how fortunate I was to be where I was and the fact that the Y has that equipment in place,” McCauley said. “I could have easily been out for a run on the street. That’s where I am a lot of mornings.”

He, too, thinks that AEDs should be in more places.

McCauley was hospitalized for six days. He had a pacemaker and defibrillator installed to protect his heart against future malfunctions. And he is already back at the Salem YMCA, although he isn’t exercising at the same threshold. On Christmas Eve, he stopped by the Friday morning spin class with candy canes. He received hugs and well wishes in return.

“We felt like it was our Christmas miracle to see Ken gone and come back. It was a real blessing,” said Stephens.

Dr. Craig Levine, an oral surgeon from Merrick, was at a bar mitzvah at the Seawane Country Club in Hewlett last Saturday when he saw his friend Lew Goldman, the host of the event, passed out on the dance floor.

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With the help of an automated external defibrillator, Levine revived Goldman.

Craig Levine (left) the Saviour

“I immediately knew that he was in cardiac arrest, and I yelled out for someone to get an AED,” said Levine, who has campaigned to make defibrillators more readily available. “I unfortunately have been through experiences like this.”

In 2005, Levine’s son Robbie, 9, died on a Little League ballfield in Merrick. A policeman responding to the scene brought an AED, but it was too late.

In Levine’s Bay Shore office in April 2007, he saw a patient waiting for a dental consultation collapse from a heart attack.

Levine brought out an AED and saved her life.

“All these things that happen make me think of my son,” Levine said. “I couldn’t save my son, but I saved the lives of two people and spared their families.”

Goldman collapsed during his twin sons’ bar mitzvah.

“I don’t know what to make of it, why this keeps happening,” Levine said Friday, shaking his head ruefully.

“The real story is the AED saved my life,” Goldman said Friday from his Merrick home, where he was recovering. “Craig Levine is a hero.”

“The fact that Craig was there and they had an AED at the Seawane Country Club, and that it happened that night, I’m one lucky man,” Goldman said.

On Sept. 18, as 71-year-old George Allison was in the back seat of his son Craig Allison’s car driving on Highway 101 in San Luis Obispo, Calif., he suffered sudden cardiac arrest.

George Allison (right) the Survivor

“We had just finished some conversation and there was some quiet time. Within about 30 seconds my son turned around,” said Barbara, who was riding in the front seat.

From the look on Craig’s face, she said, she knew something terrible was happening.

Her husband of nearly 50 years wasn’t breathing.

Craig pulled the car to the shoulder and yanked his father’s body from the back seat and tried to administer the Heimlich maneuver, thinking his father had choked on a peanut.

“My daughter-in-law got out and she was screaming for help. Her cell phone wouldn’t work,” said Barbara. “Craig pulled him out of the car and laid him on the ground, and the people showed up.”

Those people were strangers Daniel Lapidus, a San Luis Obispo dentist who had recently finished his active duty with the Air Force, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and Marisela Campos, a public health employee working toward a degree in nursing.

“He wasn’t breathing, and he didn’t have a pulse,” Lapidus told the Tribune. “I knew we had to give him CPR.”

Lapidus started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and Campos began chest compressions.

Barbara Allison said the two strangers worked for eight minutes to try to get her husband to breathe again.

A California Highway Patrol trooper arrived on scene and hit George with a defibrillator, which sends an electric shock to the heart.

George was rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to implant a defibrillator in his chest.

By Monday, he and his wife were home.

“The most memorable part of this is the people and how they reacted — the lady, the dentist and the highway patrolman — the things they did. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t ask,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “All of those things needed to come together just right, and they did.”

“Eight minutes of CPR is a very long time and almost never happens,” said Barbara. “There are very few who could have lived under these circumstances.”

“They were my guardian angels,” said George.

We will be reporting on lives saved around the world since our first documented life saved here in Singapore.

Rick Rockwood (center) with his Saviours

Duluth firefighters, trained as emergency medical technicians, were there Friday, too, but only for photographs this time. The last time they responded to the gym to see Rockwood they brought him back to life.

Rockwood, 57, had a heart attack during noon basketball on Nov. 28.

He had played in one game and was getting ready to start another. “All of a sudden I grabbed my face and said, ‘Uh-oh guys, I need help.’ They said I was gone before I hit the floor. It’s the widow-maker [an occluded artery] that got me. It was a fatal heart attack, meaning I had died. I had gone.’’

George Balach, a Duluth dentist who was there to play basketball, started performing CPR as someone else called 911.

Duluth Fire Station No. 2 is only 1½ blocks away, and firefighters were there in less than a minute, said Capt. Joel Heikes of the Fire Department. Heikes, fire equipment operator Brad Bushey and firefighter Alex Owen arrived with an external heart defibrillator, used to shock the heart to make it beat after it has stopped.

“I had an out-of-body experience,’’ Rockwood said. “I was standing and all the guys were around me and I guess they were praying. I was watching the EMTs get the defibrillator out. They cut my jersey off.’’

In reality, the firefighters found Rockwood on his back with Balach performing CPR. “That’s a key to a successful story — quick CPR and quick defibrillation,’’ Heikes said. “We continued CPR while I was getting out the defibrillator. We confirmed that he had no pulse. We analyzed it and it advised us to shock him, and after the first shock we got a pulse back. We put an airway in. That was great. It doesn’t happen all the time like that, but that was great.’’

The father of three adult sons said he had no history of heart problems or any health-related issue. He was adopted, and for that reason he scheduled regular physicals because he had no family medical history.

“I had no burn marks and no brain damage, although that’s debatable according to the guys I play basketball with,’’ he said of being zapped by the defibrillator.

“My biggest point is that George and those firefighters saved my life. If they wouldn’t have been there and the firefighters wouldn’t have had the quality training that they did, I would be dead — period.