Near Death Experience

Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands
Pim van Lommel, Ruud van Wees, Vincent Meyers, Ingrid Elfferichhttp://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm

Division of Cardiology, Hospital Rijnstate, Arnhem, Netherlands (P van Lommel MD); Tilburg, Netherlands (R van Wees PhD); Nijmegen, Netherlands (V Meyers PhD); and Capelle a/dIjssel, Netherlands (I Elfferich PhD)

Correspondence to: Dr Pim van Lommel, Division of Cardiology, Hospital Rijnstate, PO Box 9555, 6800 TA Arnhem, Netherlands (e-mail:pimvanlommel@wanadoo.nl)Summary Introduction Methods Results Discussion References

Summary Background Some people report a near-death experience (NDE) after a life-threatening crisis. We aimed to establish the cause of thisexperience and assess factors that affected its frequency, depth, and content. Methods In a prospective study, we included 344 consecutive cardiac patients who were successfully resuscitated aftercardiac arrest in ten Dutch hospitals. We compared demographic, medical, pharmacological, and psychological data between patients who reported NDE and patients who did not (controls) afterresuscitation. In a longitudinal study of life changes after NDE, we compared the groups 2 and 8 years later. Findings 62 patients (18%) reported NDE, of whom 41 (12%) described a core experience. Occurrence ofthe experience was not associated with duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death before cardiac arrest. Frequency of NDE was affected by how we defined NDE, theprospective nature of the research in older cardiac patients, age, surviving cardiac arrest in first myocardial infarction, more than one cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during stay in hospital, previousNDE, and memory problems after prolonged CPR. Depth of the experience was affected by sex, surviving CPR outside hospital, and fear before cardiac arrest. Significantly more patients who had an...