FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE REMAINS A MYSTERY (pp 2010, 2039)
Authors of a Dutch study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET conclude that
medical explanations cannot account for the phenomenon known as near-death
experience (NDE). Only a relatively small proportion of patients who became
clinically dead (resulting in oxygen deprivation to the brain) reported NDEs
after successful cardiac resuscitation.
Some people report a near-death experience (NDE) after a life-threatening
crisis. Most previous NDE research has been retrospective and is therefore
of limited value. Pim van Lommel and colleagues from Hospital Rijnstate,
Arnhem, The Netherlands, aimed to establish the cause of this experience and
assess factors that affected its frequency, depth, and content.
344 cardiac patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest
in ten Dutch hospitals were prospectively studied. All patients had been
clinically dead. NDE was defined as the reported memory of all impressions
during a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as
out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings, and seeing a tunnel, a light,
deceased relatives, or a life review. The investigators compared
demographic, medical, pharmacological, and psychological data between
patients who reported NDE and patients who did not (controls) after
resuscitation. In a longitudinal study of life changes after NDE, the
investigators compared the groups 2 and 8 years later.
62 patients (18%) reported NDE, of whom 41 (12%) described a core (deep)
experience. Occurrence of the experience was not associated with duration of
cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death before
cardiac arrest. NDEs were more common among people younger than 60 years;
deeper NDE experiences were more common among women. Substantially more
patients who had an NDE-especially a deep experience-died during or shortly
after NDE-related hospital stays. At two-year follow-up, people who had NDE
had a significant increase in belief in an afterlife and decrease in fear of
death compared with people who had not had NDE. At eight-year follow-up,
people who had reported NDE generally did not show any fear of death and
strongly believed in an afterlife, in contrast to people who had not
reported NDE.
In an accompanying Commentary (p 2010), Christopher French from Goldsmiths
College, University of London, UK, cautions that problems with NDE
definition and reliance on patients’ memory about NDE makes clear
interpretation of the study difficult. He concludes: “Perhaps the switching
of classification of patients represents nothing more than changes in
definition of NDE at different stages of the study. This possibility may
receive some support from the fact that, at the 2-year follow-up, over a
third of the 17 patients who had originally reported superficial NDEs were
then deemed to not have had NDEs at all. Another possibility is ordinary
forgetting. Such problems must be rectified in future studies because their
overall effect would be to blur the distinction between NDE and
non-NDE-patients. This overlap would make it much more difficult to identify
possible physiological and psychological differences between the groups.”
Contact: Dr Pim van Lommel, c/o Publicity and Press Department, Hospital
Rijnstate, PO Box 9555, 6800 TA Arnhem, Netherlands; T) +31 26 378 6433; F)
+31 26 378 6079; E) pimvanlommel@wanadoo.nl
Dr Christopher C French, Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths
College, University of London, London SE14 6NW, UK; T) (mobile) +44 (0) 7946
638587; E) c.french@gold.ac.uk
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