Scientists followed ER patients for a year after they survived near-death experiences
What effect does a near-death experience have on a person? Scientists studied 19 patients who came back from the brink of death… what they found might shock you
- Researchers found that 15 percent of patients in the sample had a near-death experience
- Participants who had a near-death experience had no difference in quality of life
- The research team stated that more research is needed to confirm the results
We are often told that a near-death experience is a life-changing event that changes the patient’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 percent of patients surveyed had a near-death experience
The researchers – who published their findings in the journal Critical Care – originally looked at 126 patients who had been in the five ICUs at the University of Liège in Belgium for more than a week.
The patients were admitted to the ICU 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 percent of them – 19 people – had a near-death experience. These patients were then studied further.
They were interviewed three to seven days after discharge from the hospital 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.
When patients were first interviewed, those who had a near-death experience experienced a greater propensity for dissociative symptoms.
These include feeling disconnected from oneself, feeling little to no pain and being unsure of who you are – and increased spiritual and personal well-being.
Researchers contacted them again a year later to measure their quality of life.
After that period, no significant association with quality of life was found, despite the fact that NDEs (near-death experiences) “are typically reported as transformative and may be associated with negative emotions,” the researchers wrote.
Dr. Bruce Greyson, who developed the NDE scale the researchers used in the study, has found that 10 to 20 percent of people whose hearts have stopped experience an NDE.
This is five percent of the total population.
Greyson has certain NDEs as “intensely vivid and often life-altering experiences, often occurring under extreme physiological conditions such as life-threatening trauma, cardiac arrest, or deep anaesthesia.”
The results 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 needed to confirm these findings.