A harrowing incident where a woman was trapped upside down in a frozen stream for 80 minutes and lived to recount her experience has been vividly recreated in a simulation.
Anna Bågenholm, a radiologist, encountered this ordeal while skiing in the Kjolen Mountains in Norway during May 1999 with two fellow young doctors. Despite their expertise in skiing, Anna’s fall led her to slide downhill, eventually plunging head-first into a layer of ice.
Only her feet and skis were visible above the surface, and despite her friends’ desperate attempts to rescue her, she remained ensnared upside down, submerged in the freezing water.
Emergency services were alerted, but the circumstances appeared bleak. Although she found a pocket of air, Anna struggled for survival, ultimately losing consciousness after 40 minutes as her body began to shut down.
Our bodies function optimally at a temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit).
Upon the rescuers’ arrival, Anna had been submerged under the ice for 80 minutes and was frozen rigid.
With her heart having ceased beating, she was considered ‘clinically dead’.
When she was transported by air to the University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsø, approximately 2.5 hours after her fall, her body temperature was an extraordinary 13.7 degrees Celsius (56.7 Fahrenheit).
Mads Gilbert, who led the emergency medical department, conveyed to CNN that Anna appeared ‘ashen, flaxen white’ with ‘completely dilated pupils’.
Mads described Anna as looking ‘absolutely dead’ with ‘no signs of life whatsoever’.
Nevertheless, the medical team resolved to make every effort to save her, speculating that the extreme cold might have slowed her brain, thereby protecting it from injury.
The hospital staff worked tirelessly on her for nine hours, employing a heart-lung machine to warm her blood outside her body before recirculating it.
Amazingly, her body temperature gradually increased, and by around 4 pm the following day, her heart started beating independently.
After 12 days, she regained consciousness, though it took several months for her to relearn how to walk.
Over 25 years later, a brief simulation by Zack D. Films on YouTube illustrates Anna’s survival story, showcasing how she endured this life-threatening event and became a medical milestone for surviving the lowest recorded body temperature in an adult.
The 30-second video highlights how the air pocket and the heroic medical intervention played crucial roles in her survival.
Prior to 1999, no one had survived being frozen to death at the hospital, but from then until 2013, nine out of 24 patients survived hypothermic cardiac arrest, as noted in a 2014 study led by Mads.
Anna’s experience not only marked a turning point in medical history but also transformed the medical community’s approach to hypothermia-related fatalities.
A study published in The Lancet journal stated: “In a victim of very deep accidental hypothermia, nine hours of resuscitation and stabilisation led to good physical and mental recovery.
“This potential outcome should be borne in mind for all such victims.”
Medics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospital have even adopted induced hypothermia in critical cases to extend the window of time available to save lives.