“Mother-of-two Vanessa Tanasio, 41, was rushed to Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne last week after a major heart attack, with one of her main arteries fully blocked. She went into cardiac arrest and was declared clinically dead soon after arrival. Doctors refused to give up and used a compression device called a Lucas 2 — the only one of its kind in Australia — to keep blood flowing to her brain while cardiologist Wally Ahmar opened an artery to unblock it. The Lucas device physically compresses the chest, like during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), allowing doctors to work non-stop to put a stent into a blocked artery.”
