Surviving US miner begins oxygen treatment

The lone survivor of a US coal mine explosion that killed a dozen other miners began a series of oxygen treatments at a Pittsburgh hospital expected to last at least three days.

Randal McCloy was in a coma and appeared to have suffered brain damage, doctors said. He was taken by ambulance yesterday from a hospital in West Virginia, where Monday’s mining accident occurred, to Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General Hospital.

Dr Richard Shannon, who is leading the team of doctors treating the miner, said McCloy was in stable condition, but critically ill as a result of the carbon monoxide poisoning.

“There’s no panic,” Shannon said. “There is certainly a sense of concern. He’s in critical condition.”

McCloy will receive two 90-minute treatments a day over the next three days or possibly longer to remove any remaining amount of carbon monoxide from his body “and, in doing so, to hopefully limit any injury and hasten his recovery,” Shannon said.