Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: hyperinflated lungs

  • The Lazarus phenomenon: When the dead return to life

    Tom SeweNairobi, Kenya It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their sweaty chests after a phenomenal forty-five-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation…