CAMBRIDGE, Oct 8: A surgeon at a hospital in the English city of Cambridge succeeded in bringing back a man from the dead after his heart had stopped for 40 minutes.

Doctors thought Patrick Kelly-Sporle, 63, was dead after he had a heart attack and there were no signs of a pulse, heart beat or blood pressure.

The former gamekeeper was visiting Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge for a check-up when he suffered a ruptured aorta leading to severe internal bleeding, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

But Michael Gaunt, a cardiovascular surgeon, refused to accept the patient had died and insisted he be allowed to operate. He thought that by stopping the bleeding, Kelly-Sporle could survive.

He opened up the patient’s abdomen without using an anaesthetic, and found a gaping hole in the aorta. He put in a balloon catheter to plug the hole while more than 20 pints of blood were pumped into the body.

As vital minutes passed, there came a faint pulse, then a heart beat, and Kelly-Sporle began to come round. While Gaunt began to repair the aorta in a three-hour operation the patient was sedated.

Gaunt told the paper he knew he had nothing to lose by operating: “The patient was ‘dead’ and it was very difficult to make the situation worse.”

“I had read isolated reports in the past about this and I knew it could be done if everything was done quickly and in the right circumstances.

Said Gaunt: “The patient was obviously in the hinterland between life and death. Two doctors thought he was dead, he looked dead, there was no pulse or blood pressure and he didn’t respond when I put a great slash in his stomach. But there was obviously a tiny spark of life there.—dpa