Steff Howells plays in the third division in Cardiff, Wales and it was one of his teammates, a doctor by profession, who saved him by performing cardiac massage in the first seconds that followed his illness. Since then, he has advocated for generalized training.
He says it himself: he died for 17 minutes before coming back to life thanks to the determination, the endurance of one of his comrades who gave him the heart massage that saved him. However, at barely 27 years old, Steff Howells would never have imagined living such an ordeal. This rugby player, who plays in the third division in Cardiff, as an opening half, explains that one Saturday morning, like all the other Saturdays, he got up, had his breakfast and got ready for his weekly game. And then, he tells the BBC, “All I know is that I woke up in the hospital, bedridden, with no memory of what had happened.”
>> Eriksen’s cardiac arrest: in France, “it’s three cases a day” each year on the ground, according to an anesthetist-resuscitator
What happened was that after a few minutes of play, Steff Howells collapsed on the pitch, victim of a sudden cardiac arrest. He loses consciousness and the players who are right next to him at the time try to wake him up, without success, and it is one of his teammates, Dave, who in real life is a surgeon, who arrived running from the other end of the pitch and immediately began CPR.
He is saved !
Two compressions per second, in rhythm, without stopping, and, after 17 minutes, in other words, an eternity, Howells caught his breath, weakly, but clearly. Arrived in stride, the emergency services took over with a defibrillator before transporting him urgently to the hospital. It will take him several days to open his eyes, stunned, and totally in disbelief”because I’m young, I’m 27, I’m healthy, I have a healthy life, I’ve played more than 150 games in my life, so when it was explained to me that I had made a cardiac arrest, I just didn’t believe him.”
It all happened in the fall, since then Steff Howells has been slowly getting back into sport, and if we’re talking about him again today, it’s because on the occasion of International Health Week masculine, he made the rounds of the British media, TV, radio, press, to pass on a message:
Learn life-saving gestures, learn to practice cardiac massage, train in first aid. This advice is also valid for France, where only 20% of adults are trained, compared to 80% in the countries of northern Europe.