Professor Saved After Heart Attack

Minutes after a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor collapsed from a heart attack on the Allston campus last Wednesday, a few well-trained Harvardians swooped to his aid.

“Within six or seven minutes there were two doctors, three defibrillators and an emergency medical staff,” said HBS Executive Director of Marketing and Communications David R. Lampe.

An Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officer helped a team including two physicians from the HBS branch of Harvard University Health Services (UHS), a campus security officer, and Mt. Auburn Hospital emergency medical personnel.

Andrew F. O’Brien, chief of operations at HBS, was the first on the scene according to the victim, who declined to be identified. He arrived 90 seconds after the professor fell down. Because no blood was being pumped out of the professor’s heart, he could die “in a matter of minutes,” O’Brien said.

By coincidence, O’Brien had completed a Basic Life Support training course two weeks earlier and received the certificate that morning. He put his skills to work.

“This underscores the value of CPR training because the first person on the scene was able to immediately begin administering it,” O’Brien said.

Next was HUPD officer James P. Melia, dispatched to the scene after a report of a “man down,” according to the police report released by HUPD spokesman Steven G. Catalano.

“Upon arrival a HUPD officer observed an older male lying on the footpath unconscious” said Catalano in an e-mail.

Next, Bruce J. Biller and Debra S. Poaster, both UHS physicians, arrived at the scene and continued O’Brien’s CPR while administering an automated external defibrillator.

The doctors shocked the professor four times before they were able to quell the arrhythmia, an irregular heartbeat, and restore his heart to normal.

The University has defibrillators in various areas on campus, ranging from UHS to the Malkin Athletic Center, that were donated by the Kadan Foundation, said UHS Director David S. Rosenthal ’59.

The Kadan Foundation was started by a group of HBS faculty members for one of their colleagues and has funded the acquisition of these defibrillators, according to Biller.

Biller said that one of the founders, now dead, had been a friend of the professor.

“The generosity of this man helped a person he knew,” Biller said.

Upon arrival at Mt. Auburn Hospital it was determined that the professor’s the principal coronary artery had been blocked, and staff inserted a stent, a small expandable tube used to keep blocked vessels open. He will have further treatment conducted today before possibly returning home as early as tomorrow.

The professor emphasized the “incredible assistance” he received in a span of six minutes, saying that the incident “does remind you of the way people take responsibility” in critical situations.

—Staff writer Noah S. Bloom can be reached at nsbloom@fas.harvard.edu.