Feeling Half Dead

Doctors study patients who have had a brief encounter with death

Hammersmith Hospital is taking part in the world's largest-ever study of near-death experiences to find out whether heart attack patients, who briefly lose their heart beat and brain activity, remain conscious while they are being resuscitated.

Scientific studies have shown that 10-20 per cent of people who have heart attacks and are clinically dead for a short period, can later remember and give detailed accounts of what they have experienced.

The current three-year study involves placing about 80 images on high shelves in parts of the hospital where patients are likely to be resuscitated.

Heart attack patients who then recover, will be interviewed afterwards to find out whether they can recall the resuscitation procedure and whether they have seen the images.

Ken Spearpoint, consultant nurse for resuscitation, is leading the team at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. “This is a really exciting study,” Searpoint told the Trust’s newspaper.

“If we can confirm reports that patients have seen particular images, such as a clock face for example, we have irrefutable evidence that there is consciousness or awareness at or after the point of clinical death.”

The research is being led by Dr Sam Parnia of Southampton University.

"Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment,” Dr Parnia told Medical News Today. “It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning - a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.

"During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process. What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process," he said.

Hammersmith Hospital is one of 25 hospitals in Europe, the US and Canada where the study is taking place.

October 21, 2008