Arizona lawmaker, doctor treats woman on flight with anaphylaxis symptoms

An Arizona lawmaker who’s also an emergency room doctor jumped into action during an in-flight emergency when a passenger suffered a severe allergic reaction during a cross-country flight.

PHOENIX - An Arizona lawmaker who’s also an emergency room doctor jumped into action during an in-flight emergency when a passenger suffered a severe allergic reaction during a cross-country flight.

Rep. Dr. Amish Shah was on an American Airlines flight to Phoenix when the flight attendants announced there was an emergency and asked if there was a doctor on board when a woman with a severe nut allergy was suffering anaphylaxis symptoms and she did not have her EpiPen with her.

"It was a five-hour flight. This started an hour and a half in," Shah said.

Shah was returning to Phoenix from Washington D.C. when he found himself treating the woman 35,000 feet above the ground.

"We gave her a shot of epinephrine. Before that, we tried to give her Benedryl but she wasn’t able to swallow with everything going on," Shah said.

Shah and a resident doctor attended to the woman for several hours. He was on the phone with medical control relaying what was happening.

"It came down to the fact she said, ‘I’m starting to have some chest pains.’ When we got her vitals, I did put my Apple Watch on her. (It) has a pulse oximeter which measures the oxygen in the blood," he explained, adding, "For her safety’s sake, they said let’s just land the plane and get her taken care of as soon as possible."

Phoenix Chamber CEO Todd Sanders happened to be on the flight too. He snapped photos of the emergency landing in Albuquerque.

"One of the passengers up front gave up his seat and came back and sat with us in economy so that Dr. Shah could attend to the passenger which obviously helped a lot," Sanders said.

He said everyone on board was supportive.

"What was nice, I think, was instead of what you hear these days of people being angry and having air rage, everybody just clapped that she was OK and clapped for Dr. Shah, which was awesome," Sanders said.

The passenger and her husband got off the plane in New Mexico, where firefighters and an ambulance were waiting. As for how she became exposed, Shah says they noticed an open bag of nuts nearby where the woman was sitting.

With opening the packet, the dust aerosolized and that could’ve caused her to end up with anaphylaxis.

Shah says he followed up with the woman’s husband, and she is doing fine and fully recovered now.