A woman falls ill on the street: student Elena Grassi saves her with CPR.

Sesto, for fifteen minutes, the young third-year student in Medical Radiology Techniques operated on a 65-year-old woman who had suffered a cardiac arrest.

Fifteen minutes that made the difference between life and death. Elena Grassi, a university student from Ancona, saved the life of a 65-year-old woman by performing CPR for fifteen minutes, until help arrived. The young woman, a third-year student in Medical Radiology Techniques at the Ancona University, was at the bus stop in Sesto San Giovanni when she found herself in the right place at the right time. Without hesitation, she intervened, along with another young man who rushed to her aid, managing to keep the woman alive after she had suffered a cardiac arrest.

The incident occurred on March 4th, outside the Sesto San Giovanni subway station, north of Milan. Elena was heading to her bus stop when she noticed another bus stopped with its doors open. From the driver's seat, the driver was loudly calling for help: "Is there a nurse or a doctor?" As soon as Elena realized that no one more experienced than her would step forward, she didn't think twice and intervened. Thanks to the CPR techniques she'd learned during her BLS courses, training courses that teach how to respond to cardiac arrest and how to use a defibrillator, the student immediately began CPR. Together with another young man present at the scene, who later joined Elena, they continued the maneuvers for about fifteen minutes, following the instructions of the 118 operators on the phone, until the ambulance arrived. Once the emergency responders arrived, the woman was handed over to emergency personnel and transported to the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

The gesture of the student, originally from Recanati, did not go unnoticed. After receiving a video thanking her, the hospital's Chief Clinical Officer, Alberto Zangrillo, nominated the student for Milan's highest civic award. "Give Elena the Ambrogino d'oro," the professor wrote on social media, sharing an article from Resto del Carlino that covered the story.

In the Milan metropolitan area, an average of at least eight cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are recorded every day. For about six months, a Cardiac Arrest Center has been established within the Anesthesia, Resuscitation, and Cardiothoracic-Vascular Intensive Care Unit at San Raffaele Hospital, directed by Zangrillo himself. This specialized center is dedicated to the care of patients suffering from cardiac arrest and their resuscitation using advanced technologies to address this type of emergency.