Cheri Olson, M.D., La Crosse, WI – 51 at the time of the event (2008)

Where is the best place to have a major medical emergency? In a hospital, where there is a plentiful supply of doctors and nurses. And so it was. Dr. Cheri Olson was seeing one of her more sprightly patients, Edna Athnos, and both will remember that consultation forever. Edna watched as her physician promptly died before her very eyes. Cheri had fallen onto the exam room floor and was “just gone, with her eyes open.”

July 11, 2008­–When combined with the conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), extracorporeal life support (ELS) can double the survival of adult hospital patients in comparison with CPR alone. These results were released on July 7, 2008 in The Lancet.