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(CNN) - A British woman recovered completely after suffering a six-hour cardiac arrest caused by severe hypothermia, a condition that doctors said also saved her life.
Audrey Schoeman, thirty-four, was caught in a snowstorm while walking through the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain on November 3, and her husband Rohan called emergency services when she passed out, according to a Hospital statement Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona.
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"I thought she was dead," Rohan said in an interview with local TV3.
"I was trying to feel the pulse ... I couldn't feel his breathing, I couldn't feel a beat," he recalled.
Schoeman was taken to Vall d'Hebron, where Dr. Jordi Riera was part of the team that served her.
Riera told CNN that the human brain usually suffers irreparable damage if the heart stops beating for five minutes, and Schoeman represents a very rare case.
"What happened to her is a consequence of the drop in body temperature," Riera said.
He explained that Schoeman survived with a perfect neurological result because the extreme drop in body temperature that stopped his heart also slowed his brain's metabolism, which allowed the organ to better deal with the lack of oxygen.
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Schoeman's body temperature had dropped to 18 degrees Celsius, much lower than normal from 36.5 to 37.5 degrees Celsius, and the hospital team used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to keep her alive.
ECMO replaces the function of the heart and lungs, allowing doctors to oxygenate Schoeman's blood and pump it around the body.
Riera, who is the medical director of the ECMO program in Vall d'Hebron, said her body slowly warmed up and could make her heart beat again after six hours.
"He woke up and asked: 'What am I doing here?'" Riera said.
Heart