Star

Saved his life

By Lia Bichel

19th November 2009 11:00:11 AM

Left: A 40-year-old man from Taylors Hill was taken to The Alfred hospital with serious injuries after his car hit a pylon near Hallam last week.

PARAMEDICS are praising a woman who helped save a man’s life after his car hit a pylon near Hallam last week.

The Taylors Hill man, 40, was trapped in his car for an hour and a half after he veered off the South Gippsland Freeway and hit a pylon for an overhead freeway sign last Thursday.

Senior Constable Glenn Dunn said the man was travelling alone at 100km an hour when he hit the pylon at about 8.20am.

Advanced life support paramedics and intensive care paramedics from Dandenong attended the scene to find a woman was sitting in the passenger seat controlling the man’s bleeding and keeping his head held against the seat to ensure he could breathe.

“She did fantastic,” intensive care paramedic David Kervin said. “I have no doubt that her efforts contributed to that man being alive today.”

Mr Kervin said there was extensive damage to the front of the car, with the dashboard pushed in on the driver.

“We couldn’t see him from the chest down,” he said.

CFA rescue crews worked to free the man while he was treated by paramedics.

Because he had serious head injuries, and paramedics were concerned for his breathing, the man was given a drip, sedated and placed into an induced coma while he was still in the car.

Through a tube, paramedics took over breathing for the man and also had to reinflate the man’s lungs with needles because both had collapsed.

“Both are life-saving procedures which are challenging enough to do in an ambulance,” Mr Kervin said. “Doing them to a person trapped in a car makes it that much more difficult.

Once the man was removed from the car, he was airlifted to The Alfred suffering head and chest injuries and leg fractures.

As of Tuesday, he was still in a critical condition.