Tory MSP saves heart attack victim who 'died' during Holyrood visit

Tory MSP saves heart attack victim who 'died' during Holyrood visit

Scotland's Shadow Health Secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane used his medical skills at the Scots parliament to save the life of a visitor who collapsed from a suspected heart attack.

The GP rushed to help the man in his 60s after he collapsed in Holyrood’s entrance just over a week ago.

The MSP led a team of first aiders who used a defibrillator to help resuscitate the patient.

He said he went ‘into doctor mode’ when he found the man, in his 60s, he’d been placed in the recovery position.

Dr Gulhane told the Scottish Sun: ‘He was dead. He was gone. I am just glad that we were able to help him.

‘Having a defib, that’s actually what saved this guy. It’s important to run the arrest and that’s what I did.

'You can’t do it on your own, you have to have a team to do it with. We cycled through people doing the CPR.

'We delivered a couple of shocks to him and then we stopped and reassessed at that point, and he got a pulse back.’

The Scottish Conservative MSP praised staff who assisted him in the lifesaving endeavour and called for a wider distribution of defibrillators across the country, alongside relevant CPR training.

There are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the UK each year with a survival rate of less than 1 in 10, according to the British Heart Foundation.

He hopes the incident will act as encouragement for ‘people to offer help’ and ‘learn how to save a life’.

Dr Gulhane stressed the importance of knowing CPR and added: ‘It’s a skill that people need to learn and I really want people to learn it.

'It genuinely saves lives. This person was extremely lucky.’

The condition of the patient who needed emergency care at Holyrood on October 30 before being taken to hospital is unknown and Dr Gulhane urge either him or his family to get in touch.

A Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) spokesman said: ‘We received a call at 13:39 to attend an incident at the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh.

‘An ambulance and paramedic response unit were dispatched to the scene and one patient was transported to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.’

The SAS agreed ‘early CPR and the use of a defibrillator are essential to increasing the chances of survival’.

The spokesman added: ‘By taking the time to learn these skills, you could save a life one day.’

A cardiac arrest is when the heart stops pumping blood around the body, typically due to issues with the electrical signals in a person’s heart.

A 2021 Scottish Government report stressed that out-of-hospital cardiac arrests are a ‘priority’ and pose a ‘significant healthcare challenge’.

A spokesperson from the British Heart Foundation said: ‘Thankfully, due to the swift actions of those around them, this person survived.

'However, this is not always the case - there are over 3,200 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year in Scotland and less than one in ten people survive.

‘Every minute without CPR and defibrillation reduces the chance of survival by up to 10 per cent, so knowing where the nearest defibrillator is located could be the difference between life and death.’