JooWon Lee was on his way back from Cambodia to his home in Suwanee, Georgia, when he heard one of those announcements you never want to hear on a plane.
“The flight attendants were paging, looking for doctors. I went to the front to see what was going on,” he recounted to USA TODAY. “There was this gentleman, he was a middle aged white gentleman who was unresponsive.”
Lee, 45, who is a medical doctor, said that the Delta Air Lines flight was nearing the end of its journey to Atlanta from Seoul, South Korea, on June 7 when the medical issue occurred.
He said he was able to examine the patient and quickly realized he was suffering from a heart attack. Lee was a primary care physician until earlier this month and now works for K-Doc, a Korea-based medical investment company,
“There was no pulse and he was not breathing,” Lee said. He requested the automated external defibrillator (AED) machine, which he said advised issuing electric shocks to the patient.
“In total I gave him four shocks,” Lee said, while a team of other passengers performed CPR for about 25 or 30 minutes.
Delta confirmed the flight ultimately diverted to Minneapolis so the passenger could receive emergency medical attention.
Lee said the patient was unconscious for a portion of the ordeal, but was responsive before the plane landed. He attributed his fellow passenger’s recovery to what he described as “textbook” teamwork between other medically-trained passengers and the ability of an EMT onboard to start an epinephrine IV drip.
“Even in the hospital when they do CPR like that for 20 minutes, the chance of them surviving without any brain damage … is very, very low,” Lee said. “The CPR must have been very high quality CPR.”
He has not been able to get in touch with the patient or the other onboard medical providers since the incident, but he said the other people who helped out identified themselves as an EMT, an intensivist and a cardiothoracic nurse.
He also praised Delta’s onboard medical kit, despite criticisms from some advocates that airplanes across the country should be stocking more medical supplies.
“To me I thought it was very well-equipped,” he said. “They had the IV butterfly, they had epinephrine.”
Federal Aviation Administration regulations require airplanes to carry an AED and a medical kit with equipment including and a first aid kit stocked with supplies like alcohol wipes, gauze and bandages, a stethoscope, IV equipment and medicines like antihistamines and epinephrine. Airlines are free to stock more than the required equipment, and many advocates say loading higher-quality and more varied medical supplies would be helpful in some emergencies.
The only things he might have added, he said, was an intubation kit and possibly more detailed instructions on how to open the AED’s case.
“There was a plastic lock on the AED … Eventually I just pulled it off and when I pulled it, it got torn and it opened,” he said. “Even I … didn’t know how to open it.”
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Delta Air Lines confirmed that the flight, which was operated by an Airbus A350 had four pilots, 11 flight attendants and 281 customers onboard. After restocking medical supplies and going through other checklists on the ground in Minneapolis, the plane arrived in Atlanta almost two hours late, and all the customers onboard with connections were able to continue to their final destinations the same day.
Lee said he thought it was an excellent example of things going right in a bad situation, and he just wishes he could get in touch with the patient to follow up.
“I would really want to know how the patient did after they went to the hospital. I only know him by his first name, John,” he said. “I just want to know, curious if they’re OK.”
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com
