<\/a>A doctor who presented research on the importance of CPR during the American Heart Association<\/a>\u2019s resuscitation conference in Chicago proved her point hours later, saving a man who collapsed in a hotel lobby.<\/p>\n Monique Anderson, M.D., was talking with another doctor about the importance of fast response to cardiac emergencies while leaving a reception\u00a0Sunday night when they saw a middle-age man face down on the ground.<\/p>\n Anderson and three other doctors ran to him, rolled him over and saw that his face was ashen. He was not breathing and had no pulse.<\/p>\n Anderson \u2013 who had never performed CPR<\/a> outside a hospital setting \u2013 quickly yelled out instructions to one of the doctors to call 9-1-1 and started chest compressions. After a few rounds, the man sat up and said, \u201cI\u2019m OK, I\u2019m OK,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n Anderson said her first thought when they saw him was, \u201cIs this real?\u201d The second thought was, \u201cTake action.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew we had to get to him,\u201d she said. \u201cWe assessed, we called for help and initiated what we learned.\u201d<\/p>\n As she was giving CPR, one of the other doctors cheered her on, yelling, \u201cKeep pushing! Keep pushing!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a team effort,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n As of Monday afternoon, the man had undergone\u00a0tests at a hospital and was doing well.<\/p>\n The doctor who called 9-1-1 was Eric Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., a longtime volunteer with the American Heart Association and director of cardiovascular medicine for the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina, where Anderson also works as a medical instructor.<\/p>\n \u201cPanic quickly sets in to even the best of us, but really having somebody there who knew what they were doing, doing CPR, was really key to keeping this organized and running well,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cAnd once it was all done, what an amazing feeling. This is sort of what we all do and talk about in research, now coming to life.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson, who is also an active volunteer with the American Heart Association, focuses exclusively on cardiac arrest research and has trained thousands of people in CPR at Duke and throughout North Carolina.<\/p>\n She has pursued resuscitation as a career ever since she treated a patient in the cardiac critical care unit<\/a>. She\u00a0was so inspired by that patient\u00a0that she made a short documentary about it called, \u201cSurviving Cardiac Arrest, A Family\u2019s Perspective on a Second Chance at Life.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see that there\u2019s been a lot of research in the area and it\u2019s growing, but survival has not changed to the point that we\u2019re happy about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n