Scare: Pauline Larwood started choking on her steak at dinner on Monday night

A doctor is being hailed a hero after he saved a woman who was choking on her steak in a restaurant by performing an emergency tracheotomy using a knife and hollowed-out pen.

Pauline Larwood, from Bakersfield, California, and her husband Tom had joined others at The Mark restaurant for dinner after having attended a symposium on Valley Fever earlier on Monday afternoon.

When she began choking on her food, someone at the table tried to help her before her husband called for a doctor.

‘Next thing you know my server hears “She’s choking! She’s choking!”‘ said Bo Fernandez, General Manager Executive Chef at The Mark.

‘Somebody tried to give her the Heimlich maneuver and they weren’t big enough,’ he told KBAK-TV.

Fortunately for Larwood, some of the nation’s top medical specialists were also in the restaurant after having attended the same symposium.

Dr Royce Johnson, Kern Medical Center’s chief of infectious diseases, attempted the Heimlich as well but to no avail.

Shannon Grove, who was sitting at the table with Larwood, told CBS: ‘She had already started turning a real light blue, her fingers and her lips.’

He inserted the hollow cylinder in the throat incision for use as a breathing tube.

Scene: The Mark restaurant in downtown Bakersfield was filled with guests having dinner when suddenly someone shouted, ‘She’s choking, she’s choking’

Heroes: Dr Royce Johnson, left, performed the emergency tracheotomy on Pauline Larwood with a steak and knife while Dr Thomas Frieden, right, checked her pulse

Dr Johnson had appeared on stage earlier that day at the symposium with Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

As Dr Johnson tended to Larwood, Dr Frieden monitored her pulse.

‘I was sort of looking at her breathing, Royce is blowing into this tracheotomy that he performed and the CDC director is checking her pulse,’ said Dr Paul Krogstad, a professor of pediatrics and pharmacology at UCLA. ‘And she came around.’

An ambulance came and rushed Larwood to hospital where she is said to be doing fine.

Read more: Daily Mail