ORCHARD PARK - When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin woke up Wednesday night for the first time since going into cardiac arrest 48 hours earlier, the first thing he wanted to know is who won the game.

Talk about a warrior, right?

That golden nugget of information was shared Thursday afternoon via zoom call with reporters by two of the doctors who were part of the team at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center that treated Hamlin upon his arrival Monday night after he’d gone into cardiac arrest during the first quarter of the Bills-Bengals game.

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“Last night, he was able to emerge and follow commands, and even asked who had won the game,” said Dr. Timothy Pritts, professor in the Department of Surgery at the UCMC’s College of Medicine, and Division Chief of General Surgery and Vice Chair for Clinical Operations at UC Health.

“And to paraphrase one of our partners, when he asked, (in writing because he can’t speak with the breathing tube still inserted) ‘Did we win?’ the answer is, ‘Yes, Damar you won; you’ve won the game of life.’ And that’s probably the most important thing out of this.”

Pritts was joined by Dr. William Knight IV, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and Director of the Emergency Medicine MLP Program, and both made it clear that before they ever saw Hamlin, his life was saved by the medical personnel on the field at Paycor Stadium.

“As everybody knows, Mr. Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field and it was promptly recognized by the Buffalo Bills medical staff, and that allowed for a very immediate resuscitation on the field,” Knight said.

“I think it just speaks really to the immediate recognition that there was something significantly and seriously wrong by the Bills medical staff. Tim and I speak together, we cannot credit their team enough. Unfortunately, there are injuries occasionally that happen on sports fields, be it football or others, but it is incredibly rare to have something be this serious.

“What they did was immediately marshal the emergency action plan, meaning the emergency medicine services. That prompted the airway physician, the emergency physician that was out on the field to be at his bedside in less than a minute. He had a prompt recognition of loss of pulse which gave him immediate bystander CPR, which as many of you know rarely if ever happens.”

Pritts then added, “Really, this went as well as something like this could go under very challenging circumstances, and they did a fantastic job which is why we’re here today.”

And, when asked if this could have been a vastly worse outcome if there had been even a tiny lapse in the start of treatment, Pritts said, “I think that’s fair to say.”

It was revealed Thursday that the member of the Bills’ training staff who performed the CPR that saved Hamlin’s life was assistant trainer Denny Kellington. That was the first step that needed to be taken, and once Kellington was able to get Hamlin’s heart pumping again, the rest of the treatment plan flowed to near perfection.

Since being admitted Monday night, Hamlin was making small but incremental improvement, most notably on Tuesday night when his dependence on oxygen dropped from 100% to 50%. That was a very good sign.

And then overnight Wednesday to Thursday, he came out of induced sedation and the medical team determined that he appeared to have no neurological difficulties, which was also a tremendous piece of news.

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Summing up the previous 24 hours, Pritts said, “We would like to share that there has been substantial improvement in his condition. We had significant concern about him after the injury and after the event that happened on the field, but he is making substantial progress. As of this morning he is beginning to awaken and it appears that his neurological condition and function is intact. We are very proud to report that, very happy for him and for his family and for the Buffalo Bills organization that he is making improvement.”

Both doctors made it clear that Hamlin still has a long road ahead of him, though they weren’t willing to make predictions on where his condition might go from here.

“There are many, many steps still ahead of him,” Knight said. “From our standpoint, we would like to see him continue to improve, to be completely breathing on his own. And then to be ready to be discharged from the hospital. So those are the immediate next steps as we go from here.

“His family has been with him at his bedside, as have members of the Buffalo Bills organization, really since this all began, and we really want to get him home to them so those will be the immediate next steps and then we’ll talk about potential plans for the future.”

Sal Maiorana can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @salmaiorana.To subscribe to Sal's new twice-a-week newsletter, Bills Blast, please follow this link: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Damar Hamlin asks doctors if the Bills won after awaking from injury