Lincoln man who had cardiac arrest in new car meets lifesaving EMAS team

• Video report by Emma Wilkinson

A previously fit and healthy man who suffered a cardiac arrest as he inspected his new car has been reunited with the emergency team who saved his life.

Bupendra "Boo" Parmar was sitting in the driver's seat of the car outside his home in Lincoln when he became ill.

Paramedics were called to the scene and used a defibrillator to restart his heart.

After having a stent operation, Mr Parmar was discharged from hospital just three days later.

On Friday, Mr Parmar and his wife, Suzanne, got the chance to thank the East Midlands Ambulance Service team who saved him, including paramedic Clair Compton.

Mr Parmar said: "I consider myself very very fortunate to be here, and I want to try to get the message across for more people to learn CPR because it could save a life."

Ms Compton said: "When suffering an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, survival chances are low so I knew the odds were against him. And so to be able to have saved Boo and see him today, is just wonderful and it's why we do the job."

Mr Parmar was in his new car with salesman Nick Tooby when he had the cardiac arrest.

He said: "The last thing I remember was seeing Nick come round the corner with the car he was delivering.

"The next time I remember anything was waking up in the hospital."

Mr Tooby said the whole thing happened in seconds.

He said: “After failing to rouse him, I ran to the house to tell Suzanne that Boo was having some sort of medical episode."

After a 999 call, Mrs Parmar spoke to a medical advisor who talked her through how to perform CPR.

She said: “[She] was so good at keeping us calm and counting with us during each compression to ensure we were doing it correctly.

"I just went into 'I've got to do this mode' and I think I put my emotions to one side. Then driving into the hospital, it was the not knowing, thinking 'this is it, I'm too young to be a widow.' My head was just spinning."

Nick, who like Suzanne, had never had to do CPR before, said: “It was really challenging and very tiring doing it at the speed you need to do it effectively and it felt like I was doing it for an eternity.

“I didn’t think Boo was going to survive but wanted to know I’d done everything possible to give him a fighting chance.”

Mr Parmar has recently celebrated his 60th birthday and is now planning on running the Manchester Marathon to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation.