A near-death experience (NDE) is often said to be an event that changes the perspective and life of the sufferer. But new research has found that contrary to popular belief, patients returning from the brink of death remain exactly the same a year later.
Experts followed 19 people who had a near-death experience in the intensive care unit in what is believed to be one of the first of its kind. They then followed them for 12 months after they were discharged.
Publishing their findings in the journal Critical Care, the researchers initially studied 126 patients who had been in five intensive care units at the University of Liege in Belgium for more than a week. The patients were taken to the intensive care unit for various reasons such as respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, kidney, neurological and metabolic diseases. The majority of the participants in the study were in the intensive care unit for surgical reasons.
They found that 15 percent of these patients (i.e. 19 people) had a near-death experience. Afterwards, the research was continued with these patients. Three to seven days after hospital discharge, patients were interviewed and asked about dissociative experiences, such as forgetting who they were or feeling disconnected from themselves. They were also asked about spiritual, religious and personal beliefs.
At the time of first interview with patients, those who had a near-death experience were more prone to dissociative symptoms. These symptoms included feeling detached, feeling little or no pain, and feeling uncertain about who you are, and increased spiritual and personal well-being.
They were contacted again one year later to measure their quality of life. The researchers noted that although near-death experiences are “typically reported as life-changing and may be associated with negative emotions,” there was no significant association with quality of life after this period. Developing the NDE scale used by the researchers in the research, Dr. Bruce Greyson found that between 10 and 20 percent of people with a stopped heart experience NDEs. This equates to five percent of the total population.
Greyson defines NDEs as “intensely vivid and often life-changing experiences that often occur under extreme physiological conditions, such as life-threatening trauma, cardiac arrest, or deep anesthesia.”
The researchers, who published their findings in Critical Care, wrote that more research is needed to confirm these findings.
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