What effect does a near death experience have on a person? Scientists Studied 19 Patients Who Came Back From Death’s Edge…What They Found Might Shock You
- Researchers found that 15% of patients sampled had had a near-death experience
- Participants who had a near-death experience had no difference in quality of life
- The study team said more research is still needed to confirm the results.
We are often told that a near-death experience is a life-altering event that transforms people’s outlook on life.
But new research has found that contrary to popular belief, patients who return from the brink of death remain exactly the same a year later.
In what is believed to be one of the first studies of its kind, experts followed 19 people after they had a near-death experience in the intensive care unit (ICU). They then followed up with them 12 months later.
A study published in the journal Critical Care found that 15% of patients surveyed had had a near-death experience
The researchers – who published their findings in the journal Critical Care – initially looked at 126 patients who had been in the five intensive care units at the University of Liege in Belgium for more than a week.
Patients were admitted to intensive care for a variety of reasons, including respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, renal, neurological and metabolic diseases. The majority of participants surveyed were admitted for surgical reasons.
They found that 15% of them – 19 people – had had a near-death experience. These patients were then studied further.
They were interviewed three to seven days after leaving the hospital and asked about dissociative experiences, such as forgetting who they were or feeling disconnected from themselves. They were also asked about their spiritual, religious and personal beliefs.
At the time the patients were initially interviewed, those who had a near-death experience experienced a greater propensity for dissociative symptoms.
These included feeling disconnected from oneself, feeling little or no pain, and feeling unsure of who one is – and increasing spiritual and personal well-being.
The researchers contact them again a year later to measure their quality of life.
After this time, no significant association with quality of life was found, despite the fact that NDEs (near-death experiences) “are commonly reported to be transformative and may be associated with negative emotions,” the researchers wrote. .
Dr. Bruce Greyson, who developed the NDE scale used by the researchers in the study, found that 10-20% of people whose hearts have stopped experience NDE.
This represents five percent of the total population.
Greyson defined NDEs as “intensely vivid and often life-transforming experiences, often occurring under extreme physiological conditions such as life-threatening trauma, cardiac arrest, or deep anesthesia”.
Findings in Critical Care differ from previous research done in the past year.
A 2022 study conducted by Greyson found that participants had significant differences in quality of life, even 20 years after the initial events.
The researchers for the Critical Care findings wrote that more research is still needed to confirm these findings.