US man survives being 'frozen solid' for 12 hours in snow after drinking session
A man who was found after 12 hours in the snow "frozen solid" and believed to be dead has thanked doctors who managed to save him against all odds.
Justin Smith was walking home after drinks with friends in McAdoo, Pennsylvania, US, last February when he passed out next to a road.
He spent nearly 12 hours in temperatures that plummeted to -20C.
The next morning his father Don Smith discovered his only son lying face up with his eyes open, not breathing, blue, and with no pulse.
"I called his mother and told her, "Justin's dead"," he said.
But at a news conference held on Monday to share details of Mr Smith's remarkable recovery, Dr Gerald Coleman described how he refused to give up, instructing responding paramedics to start CPR at what was supposed to be a body recovery exercise.
Dr Coleman said: "Our mind is supposed to run the show, not our hearts, because if your heart runs the show, you can run into some problems."
"I just kind of threw that to the wind and said, "No, not today"."
The CPR continued for two hours.
Mr Smith was flown to a larger hospital and hooked up to a machine that performed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which warmed and circulated his blood.
His heart started beating on its own, and a month later, Mr Smith showed signs of recovery; opening his eyes and tracking people's faces as they walked around his hospital room.
The now 26-year-old said: "It's like I woke up from a dream, but it wasn't a dream, you know."
The doctors who treated him said very low temperatures can preserve brain and other organ functions even when the person is not breathing.
But they are still astonished the only significant injuries Mr Smith suffered were the amputation of some of his fingers and toes due to gangrene.
Dr John Castaldo said: "When you look at the science of what happened to Justin, it was really hard to imagine that anyone on Earth could survive this."
Dr Coleman added: "Medicine moves forward in very extraordinary cases like Justin's. It may even be a paradigm change in how we resuscitate patients that suffer from hypothermia.
"Justin's is one of the coldest body temperatures anyone ever survived in North America."
