page_title: Anna Bågenholm
section_title: Background and incident
hierarchical_section_title: Anna Bågenholm / Background and incident
context_page_description: Anna Elisabeth Johansson Bågenholm is a Swedish radiologist from Vänersborg, who survived after a skiing accident in 1999 left her trapped under a layer of ice for 80 minutes in freezing water. During this time she became a victim of extreme hypothermia and her body temperature decreased to 13.7 °C, one of the lowest survived body temperatures ever recorded in a human with accidental hypothermia. Bågenholm was able to find an air pocket under the ice, but suffered circulatory arrest after 40 minutes in the water.
  After rescue, Bågenholm was transported by helicopter to the Tromsø University Hospital, where a team of more than a hundred doctors and nurses worked in shifts for nine hours to save her life. Bågenholm woke up ten days after the accident, paralyzed from the neck down and subsequently spent two months recovering in an intensive care unit. Although she has made an almost full recovery from the incident, late in 2009 she was still suffering from minor symptoms in hands and feet related to nerve injury. Bågenholm's case has been discussed in the leading British medical journal The Lancet, and in medical textbooks.
context_section_description: Anna Bågenholm was born in 1970 in Vänersborg, Sweden. At the time of the incident, she was 29 years old and studying to become an orthopedic surgeon. Bågenholm decided to do her residency in Narvik, Norway, and, in May 1998, she became a surgeon assistant at the Narvik Hospital. Bågenholm's mentor during this period was Yngve Jones, a doctor at the Narvik Hospital who was about to celebrate his retirement with a party on 20 May 1999.
  On that day, Bågenholm was skiing in the mountains outside of Narvik with two of her colleagues, Marie Falkenberg and Torvind Næsheim. An expert skier, Bågenholm often skied after work. On this day, as she was heading down a steep mountainside—a route she had taken several times before—she lost control of her skis. She fell headfirst onto a layer of ice on a frozen stream near a waterfall, landing on her back. A hole opened up in the ice and Bågenholm's head and torso were pulled in as meltwater filled her clothes. Her body became trapped under the ice, which was 20 centimetres (7.9 in) thick. When Falkenberg and Næsheim found Bågenholm, only her feet and skis were above the ice.
caption: Bågenholm was skiing in the mountains outside of the town Narvik (pictured) when she fell into a frozen stream.
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