Sarah Knight didn’t have a heartbeat for 15 minutes, but survived thanks to the efforts of strangers
A mum-of-three who came back from being ‘clinically dead’ said the help of strangers at the cinema saved her life.
Sarah Knight, 35, was enjoying a date night at a Didsbury cinema with her husband Patrick to mark both his birthday and Valentine’s Day in February 2023 when she suddenly slumped in her seat.
Patrick desperately called for medical help, and a security guard helped start CPR on Sarah while other cinemagoers called an ambulance. She told the Manchester Evening News she was left without a heartbeat for 15 minutes before a seventh shock of a defibrillator managed to restart her heart.
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Sarah was rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse/regurgitation – a condition where the valve between the left heart chambers doesn’t close fully, allowing blood to leak backward across the valve. She successfully underwent surgery in March 2023, leaving her with an implantable defibrillator inside her body.
The mum-of-three said looking back, she remembers very little of the days leading up to the incident. However, she told the M.E.N. that without the help of strangers in the cinema, she would not have survived.
“It all feels very disconnected for me,” she told the M.E.N. “I think it was scarier for my friends and family. For me it feels very abstract.”
The Handforth mum said she has had a ‘floppy valve’ in her heart since childhood, but never thought much of it until her cardiac arrest. “It had been getting worse, and if I had gone for an echo beforehand it probably would have been picked up.”
Just seven months after her life-saving surgery, Sarah discovered she was pregnant with her third child. He was born in May 2024, in the very same hospital she had been treated in.
“I was walking past the ward I was on while on my way to the maternity ward,” she said. “I was a bit worried but luckily that team were nearby if I needed them!”
Thankfully, Sarah had no complications during childbirth and she gave birth to a healthy little boy, Felix, who is now one. But Sarah said: “What’s happened has certainly made me more aware of the preciousness of life.
“I’ve gone from being clinically dead to creating new life with our son Felix – the body is pretty amazing.”
Sarah has now been working with the British Heart Foundation to raise awareness of cardiovascular conditions and the life-saving importance of CPR.
“I think the main thing is for everyone to be aware of CPR,” she told the M.E.N. “It’s not as rare as you think for people in their 30s and 40s to have unexplained cardiac arrest, and their lives can be saved by people who know CPR and having defibrillators nearby.”