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Cyclist whose heart stopped for eight minutes saved by passing motorist

Steve Lyth, from Ellesmere Port, says “it is a miracle” he survived after collapsing on his bike

A cyclist whose heart stopped for eight minutes before he was resuscitated by a passing driver was told by doctors that he had a one percent chance of survival.

61-year-old Steve Lyth had just left his home in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, for a bike ride last week when he collapsed after his heart stopped. Driver Niall Fitzgerald, who has 20 years of first aid experience, “stumbled upon the scene” and used a nearby school’s defibrillator to revive the cyclist.

Due to a history of heart disease, including problems with arterial fibrillation and two heart attacks which resulted in a quadruple bypass in 2019, Steve started cycling with his friend Dave Bush twice a week to help improve his fitness and general health.

The pair were heading out for a ride last Tuesday when Steve’s heart stopped while on his bike.

"Dave was showing up to mine for our bike ride. We were leaving about an hour earlier than usual,” Steve told the Liverpool Echo

"He turned the corner, said 'good morning', I replied and then my brain basically said to me 'you're going'.

"It felt like somebody turning the lights out. Everything switched off. My Apple Watch showed that my heart went from 90 beats per minute to 129, almost like there was a genetic code which said ‘fail’ and that’s what the heart did."

After lifting Steve from his bike, Dave began immediately performing CPR on his friend. Niall Fitzgerald, who was driving past, noticed what was going on and, according to Steve’s wife Gaynor, “took over”.

"It was extremely lucky,” she said. “Niall said he wouldn’t normally be going that way or pass at that time, but because there was a traffic jam on the main road, he diverted down and came down our road.

“He came and asked if everything was alright. He took one look at Dave's face and knew that something was wrong.”

Niall performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and three rounds of chest compressions on Steve before a defibrillator was brought from the nearby Christ Church primary school. Three charges from the defibrillator managed to revive Steve, eight minutes after his initial collapse.

He was then stabilised by emergency service staff before being taken to Countess of Chester hospital. Steve was later transferred to Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, where he was fitted with a dual implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD).

Both Niall and Steve believe that a range of coincidental factors – that the two cyclists left an hour later than usual, that Niall was delayed and diverted by traffic, and that school staff were able to quickly supply a defibrillator – all combined to ensure that the cyclist is still here today.

Niall said: "I was running later and there was quite heavy traffic, so I decided to go down another route and that’s when I stumbled upon him.

"I’ve been doing first aid for 20-odd years and I’d just done a refresher. The stars were aligned that day. It was a mad event and I'm just happy to see him alive."

Steve concluded: "Niall was told by the ambulance crew that, because I’ve had my previous bypass, there was a one percent chance of resuscitation.

"For me to survive, every single piece of that jigsaw - the time, the people, the equipment - it all had to be there in a matter of minutes and it was.

"Anywhere else and I’m gone, anyone else and I’m gone, without the equipment, I’m gone. Look at it any which way you want, but it is a miracle."

Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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12 comments

Avatar
rct | 2 years ago
1 like

"arterial fibrillation"  I think Ryan means Atrial Fibrillation.

Avatar
OldRidgeback | 2 years ago
4 likes

That's a really positive story. A lot more people should do first aid training if you ask me. I renewed mine last year as it'd been a very long time since I'd done it last. You just never know when you may need the training or the help you can provide. 

Avatar
chrisonabike replied to OldRidgeback | 2 years ago
3 likes

OldRidgeback wrote:

That's a really positive story. A lot more people should do first aid training if you ask me. I renewed mine last year as it'd been a very long time since I'd done it last. You just never know when you may need the training or the help you can provide. 

I'd second that.  It seems like a bit of an effort / unlikely to help - until it is needed and then it's priceless.  There isn't really an app for that (e.g. training).  Thinking of getting a similar refresher (after far too long) this year.

Avatar
OldRidgeback replied to chrisonabike | 2 years ago
1 like

chrisonatrike wrote:

OldRidgeback wrote:

That's a really positive story. A lot more people should do first aid training if you ask me. I renewed mine last year as it'd been a very long time since I'd done it last. You just never know when you may need the training or the help you can provide. 

I'd second that.  It seems like a bit of an effort / unlikely to help - until it is needed and then it's priceless.  There isn't really an app for that (e.g. training).  Thinking of getting a similar refresher (after far too long) this year.

I got my certificate last year and then had to use it about a month after I was awarded it. A lad was riding at my local BMX track without a lid and mistimed a jump, landing head first. I was on my BMX and saw him lying on the ground having a fit. I got him into the recovery position while his mate called an ambulance. The guy was bleeding heavily and totally unconscious and then very concussed when he started to come round. When the ambulance arrived, I helped guide the driver down the track as far as he could go. 

He didn't look as bad by the time the paramedics got him into the ambulance, but I'm really glad I was there to check his airway and turn him into the recovery position as I know I did the right things at an absolutely critical time. As he'd been lying face down before I moved him, he could've easily choked on his own blood.

After that I was so shaken up I had two big glasses of wine as soon as I got home.

 

Avatar
Ride On | 2 years ago
7 likes

Awesome story. Great result.

Avatar
Adam Sutton | 2 years ago
3 likes

I was just thinking how a map of where defibrillators are would be useful, and looked them up.

https://www.heartsafe.org.uk/aed-locations

Lucky guy for sure.

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Adam Sutton | 2 years ago
1 like

Useful indeed but seems a bit partial, a number of locations in my manor that I know have them aren't marked - also unmarked and worth remembering for Londoners that virtually every tube and major rail station has one, I assume this is probably the case nationwide.

Avatar
Flintshire Boy | 2 years ago
2 likes

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Motorists, eh? Damn them, yeh?

.

Avatar
Flintshire Boy | 2 years ago
1 like

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Motorists, eh? Damn them, yeh?

.

Avatar
Captain Badger replied to Flintshire Boy | 2 years ago
2 likes

Flintshire Boy wrote:

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Motorists, eh? Damn them, yeh?

.

I think you already said that...

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Flintshire Boy | 2 years ago
2 likes

Flintshire Boy wrote:

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Motorists, eh? Damn them, yeh?

.

Ah but technically when he was saving the guy's life he was out of his car so he wasn't a motorist. Sorry, I was just trying to see if I could make a more stupid, unnecessary, pointless, baiting, irrelevant, trolling comment on a feelgood happy news story than yours.

Avatar
brooksby | 2 years ago
7 likes

Eight minutes??  Very lucky man.

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