NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A New York man says he is lucky to be alive after his heart stopped beating for 45 minutes due to cardiac arrest.
Brooklyn resident Joseph Tiralosi, 56, said before being released from the hospital Tuesday he is thankful to hospital staff that resuscitated him and placed him in a medically induced coma for three days so he could recover, The New York Daily News said Wednesday.
"I'm just so grateful -- this hospital gave me my life back," Tiralosi said of his medical drama that began Aug. 17. "However long it takes for me to get back 100 percent, I'm okay with it. Time's on my side now."
Dr. Flavio Gaudio, who cared for Tiralosi at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said Tiralosi's case is even more astounding since the man suffered no brain damage as a result of his heart stoppage.
Suzanne Steinbaum of the American Heart Association agreed the incident had a rare happy ending.
"I have never seen or heard of a patient suffering an arrest that long and actually leaving the hospital," Steinbaum told the Daily News. "This is an extraordinary case."
