In March 2022, 43-year-old Mark Wohler unexpectedly suffered two cardiac arrests. The healthy and active father-of-one was playing a regular round of golf when he experienced dizziness and chest pain and decided to drive home to rest.
Mark was about a kilometre from his Deepdene house when he called his wife, Victoria.
"Since I have known Mark, he would never ever walk off the golf course for anything, so I knew something was wrong, which is why I immediately called Triple Zero (000)," Victoria said.
Mark is alive today thanks to an incredible chain of survival involving his wife who called Triple Zero (000) immediately, firefighters who rushed to the scene and Ambulance Victoria paramedics and Alfred Health intensive care specialists who performed lifesaving surgery on the street.
The life-saving team from ESTA, Fire Rescue Victoria, Ambulance Victoria, and Alfred Health with patient Mark Wohler.
The Australian-first CHEER3 (CPR, pre-Hospital ECMO and Early Reperfusion) feasibility study is a partnership between Ambulance Victoria and Alfred Health, where an ambulance rapid response car is equipped with a portable heart-lung machine known as Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO).
Intensive care specialists from The Alfred travel with MICA paramedics to patients suffering cardiac arrest within a 25-minute radius, bringing the technology with them. It means people can get the potentially lifesaving treatment they need faster, improving their chance of survival.
