By all counts, the 54-year-old man who collapsed on a recent winter night in rural Minnesota would likely have died. He’d suffered a heart attack, and even though he was given continuous CPR and a series of shocks with a defibrillator, the man was without a pulse for 96 minutes. By all counts, the 54-year-old man who collapsed on a recent winter night in rural Minnesota would likely have died. He’d suffered a heart attack, and even though he was given continuous CPR and a series of shocks with a defibrillator, the man was without a pulse for 96 minutes. But this particular instance of cardiac arrest turned out to be highly unusual: The patient made a complete recovery.