So, I know that defibrillators only work to restore a heart rhythm that’s already present, and you can’t defibrillate a stopped heart. When heart bypass surgeries or other similar surgeries are done, the heart is apparently disconnected from blood supply and completely still (machine acts as the heart) so that surgeons can work on it. If you can’t restart a heart once it’s stopped, how on earth does this work?
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Basically, the heart is stopped by pushing a slug of cold saline into the coronary arteries, and restarted by flushing that out with warm oxygenated blood.
Source: I survived this process
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