An Australian woman has lived to tell the tale after being brought back to life from being clinically dead for 42 minutes, doctors said on Monday.

Mother-of-two Vanessa Tanasio, 41, was rushed to Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne last week after a major heart attack, with one of her main arteries fully blocked.

She went into cardiac arrest and was declared clinically dead soon after arrival.

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Doctors refused to give up and used a compression device called a Lucas 2 — the only one of its kind in Australia — to keep blood flowing to her brain while cardiologist Wally Ahmar opened an artery to unblock it.

Once unblocked, Tanasio’s heart was shocked back into a normal rhythm.

“(I used) multiple shocks, multiple medications just to resuscitate her,” Ahmar said.

“Indeed this is a miracle. I did not expect her to be so well.”

Tanasio said she had no history of heart conditions and was grateful to be alive.

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“I remember being on my couch, then the floor, then arriving at hospital, and then two days go missing,” Tanasio said.

“I was dead for nearly an hour and only a week later I feel great. It’s surreal.”

The Lucas device physically compresses the chest, like during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), allowing doctors to work non-stop to put a stent into a blocked artery.

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It is the first a time a patient has successfully used the device, which was donated to the medical centre, for such a length of time in Australia, the hospital said.

Clinical death is a medical term for when someone stops breathing and their blood stops circulating.