Unlike with a heart attack, a person in cardiac arrest is always unconscious. That’s what makes this study so shocking.
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A study published in the medical journal Resuscitation has found that people who have undergone CPR following a cardiac arrest sometimes have memories of the near-experience. The research was carried out by scientists who monitored 567 patients who underwent cardiac arrest resuscitation. Fewer than 10% of these people survived, and the researchers got to interview 28 of the 53 survivors.
Their findings are incredible. They suggest that people who have slipped into a limbo between life and death and manage to fight their way back to life sometimes remember their experience.
The study had shocking results
The scientists carried out their research over 25 different hospitals. During a cardiac arrest, the heart undergoes random contractions and blood flow through the body stops, as Sky News reports. This means the brain stops receiving blood: the person is unconscious.
Using brain monitors that measured oxygen and electrical activity, the scientists found signs of brain activity in patients before they were resuscitated. This suggests they had a certain awareness - sometimes up to an hour before they were ‘brought back to life’.
Indeed, the study showed that ‘40% of people actually have a perception of having been conscious to some extent’, said lead author Dr Sam Parnia.
The spooky experience of patients
This ‘perception’ could just have been a sense that something was happening around them - like hearing doctors talking or the sounds of the hospital, or feeling pressure or pain.
However, 6 patients reported what the researcher termed ‘transcendent recalled experiences of death’.
This would commonly be referred to as a ‘near-death experience’. Patients remember dream-like scenarios such as being caught in the rain or being chased by police.
Others described what we typically think of thanks to books and films: seeing a light, a tunnel or loved ones and feeling a sense of peace.
More scarily, some had a sense of separating from their physical bodies and others realised they had died.
As part of the study, headphones were placed on patients during resuscitation. Three words - apple, pear, banana - were played on repeat as a tablet displayed 10 images. None of the patients could recall the images but amazingly, one survivor correctly remembered the sequence of fruits.
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Sources:
Sky News: Cardiac arrest patients had perception, dreams or memories, study into near-death experiences suggests
