Doctors hail miracle as toddler survives freezing conditions in pyjamas

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/04/doctors-toddler-freezing-pyjamas-miracle-poland

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A Polish toddler who nearly froze to death after wandering outside his grandmother’s house in sub-zero weather wearing only pyjamas appeared almost normal on Thursday after coming out of a coma, in a case his doctor claimed was a miracle.

Two-year-old Adas was found by police unconscious near a creek in the village of Raclawice, just north of Krakow, late on Sunday in weather of -7C.

His core body temperature had plummeted to just 12.7C (54F), and doctors kept him in an artificial coma until Wednesday, fearing brain damage.

But after being awakened, the boy on Thursday was speaking, playing and eating normally in hospital. Medical staff believe he might have come through his ordeal almost unscathed, probably with pneumonia but with no sign of frostbite.

“I’m quite confident to call this a miracle,” Janusz Skalski, a physician at the children’s hospital in Krakow, southern Poland, told the country’s Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

“It’s the only case of its kind in the world … the child has come back to the world of the living,” he said.

“We’re communicating with the boy, inasmuch as you can communicate with a two-year-old - he’s a smart child,” Skalski said.

Hypothermia expert Tomasz Darocha told the Polish PAP news agency that until now the most dramatic case of recovery from hypothermia involved a Scandinavian woman whose body temperature had dropped to 13.7C. The average human body temperature is 37C.