Dr. Oz saved a man’s life by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him at Newark Liberty International Airport late Monday night, the Associated Press reported.
@DrOz had just arrived at the New Jersey airport on a flight from Florida with his family when they saw a man fall to the ground in the baggage claim area of Terminal A around 11 p.m, according to the Associated Press.
.@DrOz had just arrived at the New Jersey airport on a flight from Florida with his family when they saw a man fall to the ground in the baggage claim area of Terminal A around 11 p.m. https://t.co/Z6is5Nc2Ww
— Good Morning America (@GMA) March 3, 2021
Port Authority Officer Jeffrey Croissant called for backup when he saw a traveler, 60, fall near baggage claim, the AP reported. According to the Port Authority, Croissant performed CPR on the unidentified man who was not breathing and did not have a pulse. (RELATED: TSA Officer Who Was In The ‘Right Place At The Right Time’ Saves A Man’s Life While On A Coffee Break)
Croissant did not recognize Dr. Oz when he approached the scene because the cardiac surgeon was wearing a face mask, ABC News reported.
“What better help than to have a cardiac surgeon?” Croissant said afterward, the AP reported.
Dr. Oz described the situation on “Good Morning America” (GMA) Wednesday.
“I couldn’t get a pulse, which is the first thing you check for,” Oz told GMA. “He wasn’t responsive.”
“I had to roll him onto his back and recognized that he was purple, I mean the color of an eggplant, and that’s a bad combination,” Dr. Oz said to GMA. “And there’s that soul-sapping moment when you realize you’re losing a life. So I started doing CPR, which is my training.”
Several other officers arrived to the scene with oxygen and a defibrillator and after he was shocked with the defibrillator, the man began to breathe on his own, GMA reported.
“You’ve seen those movies where the patient gets shocked and they jerk off the ground – that’s exactly what happened. Unfortunately, usually the heart doesn’t start again,” Oz said. “In this case, like the movies, his heart started. You get goosebumps just seeing this happen.”
Dr. Oz told GMA that the man is “awake and alert, neurologically intact.”