Melbourne, May 28 (ANI): A hospitalised man who had developed an irregular heartbeat reverted to a normal rhythm after being shot with a Taser gun, according to a medical report.

The 28-year-old man had been pursued by police in Connecticut and had tried to evade them by spending up to 40 minutes in a frosty lake.

The police eventually took him into custody and transported him to Hartford Hospital, where doctors saw that his body temperature had dropped to 89deg Fahrenheit and that his pulse was racing up to 150 beats per minute.

“I don’t know exactly what he had done but he fled capture from them and he hid in a lake,” News.com.au quoted Dr Kyle Richards, a cardiologist at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, as saying.

After treatment, the patient was eager to leave and became aggressive.

“He got very combative and started yelling in my face and that’s when I left the room and got security,” Dr Richards said.

To calm down the man, police and security used a Taser stun gun, which shoots out a lead connected to two barbs that can deliver up to 50,000 volts.

Once shot, the patient calmed down and another electrocardiogram showed his heart rhythm was normal.

Dr Richards and others said the incident was evidence that the stun guns may affect the heart, as critics allege.

“This is the first report of a patient receiving a shock of this kind and having a positive outcome,” he said.

Dr Richards said studies done in pigs show the weapon can affect the heart muscle.

“People can spontaneously go from atrial fibrillation into a normal rhythm without any intervention at all. You cannot conclusively say that the Taser did it,” he said. (ANI)