How long can one survive without a heartbeat?

Difficult one this! The common perception is 3-4 minutes but we had a patient a while ago who went into cardiac arrest shortly after arriving. read more

The brain can survive for 4 minutes without oxygen, then brain cells start dying. So if there is no heartbeat, the heart is not contracting, the blood is not circulating through the body, and there is no oxygen supply. Other tissues and organs can live longer without oxygen. For example an arm or leg can survive up to 6 hours. read more

Good question. The heart is vital to our survival, if the heart stops, the blood supply to the brain stops and we can die very quickly if the heart isn’t started again. We can’t survive without something to pump blood around our body, this doesn’t have to be a heart though. read more