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Story by Marissa Rosenbaum
Contributed photos
JOHN STREIFF, M.D., has been practicing
medicine since he finished his residency in 1989.
But on a sunny, blue sky April day, the
Edinboro Medical Center doctor was on the
other side of the table after going more than
13 minutes without a heart beat. To this day,
he does not remember anything.
“If someone wasn’t doing CPR, he would be
dead,” says Dr. Frederick Havko, an emergency
physician for Saint Vincent Health Center,
who had resumed medical services for Dr.
Streiff when he arrived at the emergency
room. “His heart had completely stopped.”
Sudden death
It was the first WQLN Gears to Beers race
in April 2010. Dr. Streiff joined more than
200 bicyclists for the 25-mile ride from
WQLN to Sprague Farm & Brew Works in
Venango, Pa.
Photo courtesy of Tom New.
But during the first third of the ride on
Oliver Road, just past Golden Road and
quite a ways down from the long slope from
Dunn Valley Road that has become known as
“Cardiac Hill,” Streiff had just mentioned the
snowmobile trails before he stopped talking
suddenly, veered across the road, hit a ditch
and slipped off his bike.
“I ran over to his bike and knew he had
carried nitroglycerin with him, so I was
medical miracles
to your health
Dr. Jo John Streiff, an Erie area physician, took off on a bike ride with WQLN’s Gears to Beers tour in 2010 (inset, left). He ended
up as
a patient less than a few miles into the trip. Photo by Marissa Rosenbaum
looking for that,” says Edinboro resident
Jennifer Correll, a close family friend who
had been riding with Dr. Streiff. “At first I
was pulling out inner tubes and anything
but the nitro, but I finally found it on him
and got some under his tongue. Another
rider (Pierre Bellicini) started doing chest
compressions, and I was screaming for
someone to call the ambulance.”
Dr. Streiff had undergone open-heart
surgery seven years earlier after he had 95
percent blockage, so Correll’s initial thought
was that he was having a heart attack.
However, he was suffering from a sudden
death, cardiac arrest — unexpected death
caused by the loss of a heart function.
Unlike a heart attack, which is caused from
a blocked artery, cardiac arrest occurs when the
electrical system to the heart malfunctions and
suddenly becomes very irregular. In Dr. Streiff ’s
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