The unnamed boy, 14, had jumped into the Naviglio Canal near Milan, Italy, in April of this year, but when he failed to come up to the surface, his friends panicked.
After frantically searching the murky waters, the friends called emergency services when they failed to find their pal.
A team of divers were dispatched to the site, eventually finding the teen’s body under the water at 5.32pm, 42 minutes after he had gone into the water.
He was taken to hospital by helicopter, where Italian doctors treated him using Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation - where an artificial lung outside the body is used to pump oxygenated blood through it.
‘[The recovery was] an exceptional event’ said Alberto Zangrillo, director of Resuscitation at the Milan hospital the boy was treated at.
‘The kind that makes us think that some parameters regarding survival in a state of hypoxia [reduced oxygen supply to the body] must be revised.’
The boy has now made a full recovery, though his right leg had to be amputated below the knee due to circulation problems as a result of the accident.