Revived swimmer was dead for an hour
By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Last Updated: 1:43am GMT 19/01/2008
A man has survived after his heart stopped beating for up to an hour when he drowned while swimming in the sea near Cape Town.
John Deeks, 35, who was born in South Africa but has British citizenship, got into difficulties while swimming in unusually heavy seas off Glencairn.
A shark spotter on shore raised the alarm when he saw Mr Deeks's lifeless body floating face down.
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Two men, who have not been identified, brought Mr Deeks back to the beach.
He was not breathing and had no heartbeat, but a volunteer doctor with the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), South Africa's lifeboat service, began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and advanced life support paramedics took him to hospital.
His heartbeat was only restored almost an hour later, and he spent several days on a ventilator before making an apparently full recovery.
Mr Deeks, an architectural technician, from Colliers Wood, south London, returned to his mother's house in Glencairn, yesterday.
He said that being brought back from the dead "feels great".
"From the point of surviving something like that it's fantastic. They said I was clinically dead. Apparently people in these situations do survive, but you have got about a four per cent chance, so I was very lucky.
"Actually I don't remember anything of the event. Basically I went out for a swim and the sea was very rough and the tide was very high and I got into difficulties. I must have got pulled over by a wave and caught in a current."
He put his survival down to being a healthy person with a healthy lifestyle "and a bit of luck".
Craig Lambinon, a spokesman for the NSRI, said resuscitation efforts began between 20 and 30 minutes after Mr Deeks's heart stopped beating.
Mr Lambinon said that a woman in Alaska was known to have been revived after spending 40 minutes under water, but Mr Deeks's survival was at the extreme end of human possibility.
"It's not unheard of but to recover to that extent that quickly, it's very seldom that that happens.
"There's normally some sort of therapy that's needed, for things like slurred speech, muscular abnormalities, neurological problems, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months, sometimes for years."
He put Mr Deeks's survival down to a combination of factors. "It's assumed that the cold water plays a part. It would have been relatively cold, 14 or 15 Celsius," he said, adding that the expert care he received the moment he left the water was vital.
"All of those people and all of those systems all worked the way they would in an ideal world. He had luck on his side, that's really what saved his life."
Mr Deeks's girlfriend, Rosie Avalon, 21, from Southend, Essex, has flown to South Africa to be with him.
It would be great to find out what is special about the 4%. It can't be just the cold water as most drowned people pulled out of cold water are not revived.
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