Making strides towards home during a warm July walk, Joe and Sandi Serafini’s walk stopped within two blocks of their Spanish Springs home.

“My wife and I walk the dogs most every day,” Joe said while petting Abby, a large Rottweiler.

Maggie, a Heinz 57, according to Joe, also wiggled up for her turn.

The routine walk on July 28, 2008, ended in a case of hypothermia for Joe, who suffered cardiac arrest during the walk.

“It seemed like Joe kind of stumbled and I asked, ‘Are you OK?’ and he just fell back,” said Joe’s wife, Sandi.

In the quiet neighborhood, Sandi recalled walks when she has never seen a car pass by, but the Serafinis were lucky that day and a truck with three men pulled up and called the paramedics.

“I was airlifted out with a helicopter,” said Joe, who was taken to Renown Regional Medical Center.

Before CareFlight could take Joe to the hospital, paramedics had to shock his heart in order to revive him.

Once at Renown, Joe was wrapped in what he describes as “bubble wrap” and received a lifesaving procedure in which hospital staff induced medical hypothermia.

“They dropped my body temperature to the hypothermic rate to prevent my organs from being destroyed,” Joe said.

Anne Towner, clinical nursing supervisor, RN and BSN in Renown’s cardiac intensive care unit explained that studies have shown that people who have suffered hypothermia, from falling through ice on a frozen lake for example, are able to make a full recover because they are gradually warmed at the body is allowed to heal slowly.

She said this works for patients who have suffered a heart attack because it allows their body to heal without a surge of oxygen to the brain.

“We have been discovering, and studies have shown, that even if we get their heart started because their brain has been without oxygen for so long, they don’t come back from it,” Towner said.

Towner, who has been a nurse at Renown for more than 28 years, said that she had learned of using hypothermia to help heart attack patients at a nursing conference four years ago.

“They are essentially in a cold coma for 24 hours; after 24 hours, we start to warm them up and they are on full life support at the time,” Towner said. “We increase them gradually over their temperature over eight to 10 hours.”

Towner explained that the goal is to reduce the patient’s body temperate to 89 degrees, about eight degrees lower than a normal body temperature. This is accomplished by wrapping the patient in a blanket that allows cold water to circulate through it. Later, warm water circulates through to warm the patient up at about 1 degree an hour.

“The hypothermia doesn’t shut everything down exactly, but it will slow everything down,” Towner said. “It just slows all the functioning down and allows it to heal. It preserves brain functions.”

Towner said that the initial shock to the patient’s system after that have been revived from a heart attack causes a lack of oxygen to their brain.

“The goal to get them cooled is within four to six hours,” Towner said. “You want to do it as quick as possible. That’s our main goal to preserve brain functions.”

After being warmed back to a normal body temperature, Joe remembers waking up and feeling well and being well taken care of.

“As soon as I woke up, I felt better than before I had the attack,” he said. “The care I got there as phenomenal.”

Joe said he is thankful for the procedure because it saved his family from the grief they could have experienced.

“They really didn’t give him very much of a chance,” said Sandi, who will have been married to Joe for 47 years in April.

“If anyone ever had an attack, I would say Ziplock them,” Joe said with a smile. “I think it is a wonderful procedure.”