Mr. Specter. What did you do for him?
Dr. Shires. He was given resuscitation, including an endotracheal tube, intravenous fluids, blood, moved to the operating room, prepared, draped, an abdominal incision, laparotomy made, just as is described in the record. The injuries were in fact mortal and involved both major vessels in the abdomen, the aorta, the inferior vena cava, and there had been massive exanguinating hemorrhage into the abdomen—in and around the abdomen.
After securing control of all the many, many bleeding points and the bleeding organs, he never had regained consciousness. Approximately 15, 16—whatever it is, approximately, pints of blood had been given, and he had suffered irreparable anoxia from the initial massive blood loss incident to the gunshot wound. When his heart did stop, even though we felt this was a terminal cessation of heartbeat, efforts were made at resuscitation by open heart massage and all that went with it, but never once was an effective heartbeat obtained, so that our initial impression was that it was correct in that this was simply cardiac death and not cardiac arrest.
Mr. Specter. Did you come close to saving him, in the vernacular—in lay terms?
Dr. Shires. There has never been recorded in medical literature recovery from a wound like this. There was too much blood lost too fast. Had the injury occurred right outside the operating room, it might have been possible to reduce the period of anoxia that comes from overwhelming blood loss like this, sufficiently to have corrected it. We did control all the bleeding points with a lot of difficulty, finally all bleeding points were controlled and this was a mortal wound—there was no question about that.
Mr. Specter. Are the details of your observations, examination, and treatment of Mr. Oswald set forth in the two pages of this report which I have just shown you in Commission No. 392?
Dr. Shires. Yes, the operative reports that are contained there.
Mr. Specter. Thank you very much, Dr. Shires.
Dr. Shires. Thank you.