… doctor says Muamba was dead for an hour
(REUTERS) – Bolton Wanderers will host Blackburn Rovers as scheduled on Saturday in their first Premier League game since midfielder Fabrice Muamba suffered a cardiac arrest in last weekend’s FA Cup quarter-final at Tottenham Hotspur. Muamba remains in intensive care at the London Chest Hospital but Bolton said his family wanted the club to fulfil their fixtures.
“We spoke together with the players as a group this morning and I talked with Fabrice’s family last night. Fabrice’s father Marcel and his fiancée Shauna were keen that we fulfil our fixtures. Once the players knew this, there was no doubt in our minds that we would play the matches,” manager Owen Coyle told the club website (www.bwfc.co.uk).
The club said the abandoned FA Cup tie with Spurs will take place at a date and time to be confirmed by the FA.
Coyle said on Tuesday, after Bolton’s league match at Aston Villa had been postponed that Muamba’s heart was beating without the help of medication. “We remain very much at the beginning of a long-term journey for Fabrice and his family,” he added

DEAD
Meanwhile, Muamba has made a miraculous recovery after being “in effect dead” for 78 minutes following his cardiac arrest in Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final, doctors said yesterday.
The Premier League club’s doctor Jonathan Tobin told the BBC that 15 defibrillator shocks had failed to get the 23-year-old’s heart beating in the hour after he collapsed on the pitch at Tottenham Hotspur.
“We were fearing the worst and didn’t think we’d get the recovery we had. It’s incredible. It was 48 minutes when he collapsed to reaching hospital and a further 30 minutes after that. He was, in effect, dead at that time,” he said.
Tobin said he had gone out into the corridor and cried when the situation sank in after Muamba had arrived at the London Chest Hospital.
By Tuesday evening, however, the midfielder was sufficiently recovered to tell Tobin that he was feeling fine.
“I went to see Fabrice last night. I went in and he said ‘Hi, doc.’,” Sky television quoted Tobin as saying. “I asked him how he was and he said ‘Fine’.”
Andrew Deaner, a consultant cardiologist at the London hospital who was at White Hart Lane as a spectator and ran on to the pitch to help, said he had also been astonished by the player’s recovery.
“If I was ever going to use the term miraculous it could be used here. He has made a remarkable recovery so far,” he told the BBC.
“Two hours after (he had regained consciousness) I whispered in his ear, ‘What’s your name?’ and he said, ‘Fabrice Muamba’. I said ‘I hear you’re a really good footballer’ and he said ‘I try’. I had a tear in my eye.”
Deaner said Muamba’s life was not in danger now but it was too early to say whether he would be able to play again. Sam Mohiddin, the cardiologist looking after the player, said however that “normal life is within the spectrum of possibility.”
The match against Tottenham was abandoned at 1-1 just before halftime and has been rescheduled for next Tuesday.
The Sun newspaper quoted a family friend reporting that Muamba had asked who won the match when he regained consciousness.
“He was told the match was called off while the two teams were drawing 1-1. Fabrice asked why they had stopped it and his father said, ‘Because of you’.”