A Nassau County resident is recovering after surviving a ruptured splenic artery, an event that required immediate intervention and significant resources at Northwell’s North Shore University Hospital (NSUH). The incident highlights the importance of rapid medical response and ongoing community blood donations.
Cody Cohen, 28, experienced severe stomach pain while working from home in Great Neck. The situation escalated quickly when he lost consciousness in his bathroom. His wife, Gabriella Orbach, a nurse on maternity leave, immediately called Hatzolah paramedics who stabilized Cohen and transported him to NSUH.
At the hospital’s Level 1 Trauma Center, Cohen was found to have lost feeling below the waist due to fluid buildup in his abdomen. A CT scan confirmed a ruptured aneurysm in his splenic artery. “I was fading. I needed to get into surgery,” Mr. Cohen recalled.
Cohen went into cardiac arrest and was taken to a newly opened hybrid operating room where trauma surgeon John Platz, MD, manually restarted his heart. Over two surgeries lasting more than 10 hours, doctors used resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) and embolization techniques to stop the bleeding and removed his spleen.
“About 10 percent of the people actually survive what he went through,” said Matthew Bank, MD, executive director of Northwell’s Trauma Institute. “He needed a massive amount of blood. The average male has about 20 units of blood in their body. So we replaced his entire blood volume twice in the operating room before we got control of the aneurysm.”
The procedures required 47 units of blood—more than double what an average adult body contains—and over 100 medical staff participated in Cohen’s care during an ongoing regional shortage of blood products. Alexander Indrikovs, MD, senior director of transfusion medicine at Northwell Health, described it as an extreme case: “It takes a lot of volunteers in the community to donate all the blood components that were used in this case,” said Dr. Indrikovs. “The fact that we have a volunteer system in the United States made this save possible. We keep about 200 units of Cody’s blood type, which is O positive, in our blood bank. But it takes dedicated blood donors who come again and again to treat cases like this.”
After spending six days in intensive care and receiving more than 80 units of blood products overall, Cohen was discharged with normal heart and brain function—a result that Dr. Bank described as nearly miraculous: “Everything really has to line up,” said Dr. Bank… “When your heart stops, you’re not delivering blood to your brain anymore. It was the second miracle. We knew he was alive, but waking him up to see that his brain was intact was almost unbelievable.”
Cohen resumed playing basketball within three months and recently returned with his family to thank hospital staff while urging others to donate blood amid continued shortages for types O negative and O positive as well as platelets (https://nybc.org/donate-blood/). “Blood donation saved my life,” said Mr. Cohen. “I’m living proof of the importance of blood donation and how it can impact any person. When you’re giving blood, this outcome — my outcome — is the one you’re hoping for.”
To schedule a donation appointment or learn more about local needs for specific types such as O negative or platelets, visit https://nybc.org/donate-blood/.
