Life really CAN flash before your eyes when you’re dying!

An intensive care unit doctor has revealed what patients on the brink of death experience, including hearing medics treating them and feeling the effects of the CPR on their bodies.

Dr Sam Parnia, an associate professor for the Department of Medicine at NYU Lagone Health, has spent 25 years studying the moment a patient’s heart stops.

For decades, those who have been brought back from the edge of death have reported heightened consciousness, Dr Parnia said.

The ICU doctor said this was even the case when patients were not conscious and ‘in death’.

Two of the 28 participants recalled hearing the medical staff working while they were receiving CPR (file image)

Some patients recalled feeling the effects of the CPR on their bodies while it was taking place (file image)

Dr Parnia’s study examined the experiences 567 men and women who received CPR after going into cardiac arrest. 

He told Medical News Today there were five key themes that emerged from the patients he studied. 

While some patients recalled specific things, Dr Parnia said some ‘memories’ were likely misinterpreted medical events.

A example of this was one patient who believed he was ‘burning in hell’ – which Dr Parnia said was likely a reaction to the burning feeling from a potassium IV drip.

Two of the 28 participants recalled hearing the medical staff working while they were receiving CPR. 

One patient remembered seeing medical staff working and could feel his chest being rubbed. 

Three of the patients reported dream-like experiences, one of which involved a singing fisherman. 

Some participants recalled feeling the CPR on their bodies take place while others remembered evaluating their life and thinking on how they had impacted others.

Six of the 28 patients interviewed remembered the experience of dying, with one person hearing their deceased grandmother telling her to return to her body.  

Some individuals felt they were heading to a destination that they perceived as home.

‘We characterize the testimonies that people had and were able to identify that there is a unique recalled experience of death that is different to other experiences that people may have in the hospital or elsewhere,’ Dr Parnia said. 

Some individuals felt they were heading to a destination that they perceived as home (file image)

Three of the patients reported dream-like experiences, one of which involved a singing fisherman (file image)

‘And that these are not hallucinations, they are not illusions, they are not delusions, they are real experiences that emerge when you die.’ 

The men and women studied had brain monitoring devices attached to them to see if there was any unconscious learning while they were undergoing CPR.

The devices would project one of ten images into a screen and audio would be played with different words, such as ‘apple’ or ‘banana’.

Only 53 of these patients, fewer than 10 per cent of those studied, lived to be discharged from hospital. 

Of those, 25 could not be interviewed due to poor health and the remaining 28 were asked about their experiences two to four weeks after their cardiac arrest.

The time they were interviewed depended on their recovery.

Participants who passed an Abbreviated Mental Test Score, to determine how their brain was functioning, were then asked open-ended questions on their experiences while receiving CPR.