Patients Report Lucid Experiences Of Death While Being Unconscious During CPR: Study

Around 20 percent of people who survive CPR post-cardiac arrest describe lucid experiences of death that they came across in their unconscious state, reveals a SciTech Daily report.

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This is according to a study conducted by NYU Grossman School of Medicine where they looked at 56 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalised and who received CPR between May 2019 and March 2020 in the US and the UK.

Less than 10 percent recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital despite immediate treatment. Survivors revealed strangely unique lucid experiences, which included the perception of the feeling of separating from the body and experiencing it all without any pain.

Many also reported taking a hard look at their life, their actions and intentions etc. Researchers also discovered that these were different from hallucinations, dreams, or delusions.

Researchers included tests for hidden brain activity. They found that discovery of spikes of brain activity including gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves up to an hour into CPR.

Most of these waves occur naturally when people are conscious and are performing brain-intensive activities such as thinking, memory retrieval as well as perception of consciousness.

Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, the lead study investigator and an intensive care physician, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health, ¡°These recalled experiences and brain wave changes may be the first signs of the so-called near-death experience, and we have captured them for the first time in a large study. Our results offer evidence that while on the brink of death and in a coma, people undergo a unique inner conscious experience, including awareness without distress.¡±

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Parnia added, ¡°These lucid experiences cannot be considered a trick of a disordered or dying brain, but rather a unique human experience that emerges on the brink of death,¡±.

She states that when the brain¡¯s shutting down, it releases nature's barriers, allowing access to the depths of an individual¡¯s consciousness, including memories from their childhood and significant events in life until death.

While it¡¯s still unknown what¡¯s the evolutionary purpose of this phenomenon, Parnia states it highlights intriguing questions around human consciousness even at death. Researchers call for more empirical investigation on recalled experiences surrounding death.

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