Survivor: Edward Breech
Date of Event:
Rescuer(s):Elliot Breech
For Edward, it was Christmas morning after an overnight ER shift. Presents were opened. He ate blueberries and went to the basement for a nap, planning to sleep for just a little while.
About thirty minutes later, Edward’s wife heard a desperate rattle for air. He had choked. Oxygen fell away. His heart slipped into cardiac arrest. She came downstairs and found him cyanotic, blue from head to toe. She called for their daughter.
A Daughter Steps In with CPR
Edward's daughter Elliott dialed 911, handed the phone to her mother, and without waiting for fear to catch up, pulled her father from the bed to the floor. She started CPR. She did not stop. For 9 minutes and 40 seconds she delivered more than 1,000 compressions, keeping blood moving when his heart could not.
First Responders and Prolonged Resuscitation
Police arrived and applied an AED that said “No shock advised.” EMS arrived and continued CPR, eventually placing him on a LUCAS device for nearly an hour as he repeatedly gained faint pulses and then rearrested.
When a pulse finally held, they rushed him to the very ER where he had worked just hours earlier. Edward arrested again in the ambulance and later in the ER. Another 20 minutes of CPR before ROSC returned. The cause became clear. A massive aspiration event had filled both lungs. They were exchanging no oxygen at all. His oxygen saturation stayed below 70% for nearly eight hours. Edward became the hospital system’s first mobile ECMO case. He was too unstable to transport, so the lifesaving circuit came to him. He spent ten days on ECMO and 22 days in the cardiothoracic ICU.
The CPR That Made the Difference
His heart was later cleared as healthy. What saved him was not a shock. Not medication. Not a machine.
It was CPR. Long, relentless, perfectly delivered CPR by his daughter, Elliott.
Elliott was a student athlete at the University of Pittsburgh and had learned hands only CPR through a program inspired by NFL player and Pitt alum Damar Hamlin that required athletes to learn the skill.
That training became the difference between life and death in her own home.
A Remarkable Recovery
Today, Edward is neurologically intact. A survivor of an extraordinarily long, non-shockable cardiac arrest that few live through, and even fewer walk away from as he did.
Edwards says, “My daughter deserves recognition for her amazing bravery, mental and physical strength and determination to not lose.”