A British university student “died for 25 minutes” in a US hospital after extreme sunburn at a summer camp. Charlie Vincent, 20, flew to New Hampshire in June to work at a summer camp for children where he would be teaching six-year-olds how to canoe, but during his first day on the water he was badly sunburnt, resulting in second-degree burns on his legs. Camp leaders took Charlie, a film student going into his third year at De Montfort University in Leicester , to a general hospital in the state where it was discovered that he also had patches of pneumonia on his lungs.
The youngster from Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire , was operated on for the respiratory infection but during surgery he suffered a cardiac arrest, a mini-stroke, and his heart stopped for 25 minutes, according to his family. Charlie’s 24-year-old sister, Emily Vincent, said doctors discovered Charlie had an enlarged heart, also known as cardiomegaly, which causes the heart to work harder than normal – a condition they suspected he could have had since birth – but it took “something like a respiratory infection” for it to present itself. He spent around a week in an induced coma, with doctors fearing he would require an urgent organ transplant for his heart and both kidneys, but after a “miracle” recovery, this may no longer be required – although he may still need a heart transplant at a “much later date”.
Charlie and his parents were scheduled to fly back to the UK on Thursday on .