Terrifying simulation shows how woman survived 80 minutes trapped upside down under ice
The terrifying moment a woman became trapped upside down in a frozen stream for 80 minutes and miraculously lived to tell the tale has been brought to life in a simulation.
Anna Bågenholm, a radiologist, was attempting to ski the Kjolen Mountains in Norway in May 1999 with two other young doctors when disaster struck.
They were all experienced skiers but when Anna fell, she ended up sliding downhill and landed head-first into a layer of ice.
Only the 29-year-old's feet and skis were visible above the surface and despite her friends' best efforts to free her, she remained stuck, upside down, beneath the ice and submerged in deadly cold water.
Advert
They called the emergency services but the situation looked dire as despite finding a pocket of air, Anna fought for her life but lost consciousness after 40 minutes as her body began to shut down.
The ideal temperature for our bodies sits at 37.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).
When rescuers arrived, Anna had been under the ice for 80 minutes and was frozen solid.
As her heart has stopped beating, she was deemed 'clinically dead'.
By the time she was airlifted to University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø, some 2.5 hours since she fell into the ice, her temperature was recorded at an unprecedented 13.7 degrees Celsius (56.7 Fahrenheit).
Mads Gilbert, head of the emergency medical department, told CNN she was 'ashen, flaxen white' with 'completely dilated pupils'.
Mads said Anna looked 'absolutely dead' with 'no signs of life whatsoever'.
However, the team decided to pull out all the stops to save her life, hoping that perhaps Anna had become so cold that her brain would've slowed down and therefore protected itself from damage.
The hospital worked on her for nine hours, using a heart-lung machine while pumping the blood out of her body to warm it up and circulate it back through her.
Gradually and miraculously, her temperature began to rise and at around 4pm the next day, her heart restarted and began pumping blood on its own again.
After 12 days, she opened her eyes again, though it took months for her to learn to walk again.
Now, more than 25 years later, a short simulation by Zack D. Films on YouTube has illustrated how Anna pulled through her ordeal - and how she made medical history for being the first person to survive the lowest body temperature ever recorded in an adult.
The 30-second clip shows how the skier survived thanks to the air bubble and due to the heroic efforts of medics.
Before 1999, no patient had ever survived being frozen to death at the hospital but in the years that followed to 2013, nine out of 24 patients survived hypothermic cardiac arrest, according to a 2014 study led by Mads.
Anna's case not only made medical history but changed the way doctors approached hypothermia deaths.
A study in The Lancet journal said: "In a victim of very deep accidental hypothermia, nine hours of resuscitation and stabilisation led to good physical and mental recovery.
"This potential outcome should be borne in mind for all such victims."
Medics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital have even introduced hypothermia in critical cases to try to buy more time to try to save their lives.
Liv Bridge