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After the shock there was clinical death, what are the consequences? Clinical death: causes, main signs, assistance

Clinical death is a condition when a person can be brought back to life if resuscitation measures are provided in a timely and correct manner, then the consequences will be insignificant and the person will live a full life. People who have experienced clinical death live a unique mystical experience and upon their return become different.

What does clinical death mean?

Clinical death, definition, is a reversible terminal stage of dying that occurs as a result of a sudden death in the circulatory system as a result of severe injuries (beating, accidents, drowning, electric shock), serious diseases, anaphylactic shock. The external manifestation of clinical death will be a complete lack of vital activity.

Clinical and biological death

How does clinical death differ from biological death? At a superficial glance, the symptoms in the initial stages may be similar and the main difference will be that biological death is an irreversible terminal stage in which the brain is already dead. Clear signs indicating biological death after 30 minutes - 4 hours:

rigor - body temperature drops to ambient temperature;
symptom of floating ice (the lens of the eye is cloudy and dry);
cat's eye - when the eyeball is squeezed, the pupil becomes vertical;
cadaveric (marble) spots on the skin;
decomposition, cadaveric odor 24 hours after death.

Signs of clinical death

The signs of clinical and biological death, as mentioned above, are different. Characteristic signs of clinical death of a person:

cardiac arrest, circulatory arrest - pulse cannot be felt;
lack of consciousness;
apnea (lack of breathing);
dilated pupils, no reaction to light;
pale or cyanotic skin.

Consequences of clinical death

People who have experienced clinical death change greatly psychologically, they rethink their lives, their values change. From a physiological point of view, properly performed resuscitation saves the brain and other tissues of the body from prolonged hypoxia, so clinical short-term death does not cause significant damage, the consequences are minimal and the person recovers quickly.

Duration of clinical death

Clinical death is a mysterious phenomenon and there are rarely incidental cases when the duration of this condition goes beyond the limits. How long does clinical death last? Average numbers range from 3 to 6 minutes, but if resuscitation measures are carried out, the period increases, and the low temperature also contributes to the fact that irreversible phenomena in the brain occur more slowly.

Longest clinical death

The maximum duration of clinical death is 5–6 minutes, after which brain death occurs, but sometimes cases arise that do not fit into the official framework and defy logic. This is the case of a Norwegian fisherman who fell overboard the ship and spent several hours in cold water, his body temperature dropped to 24°C, and his heart did not beat for 4 hours, but doctors resuscitated the unfortunate fisherman, and his health was restored.

Ways to revive the body during clinical death

Measures taken to recover from clinical death depend on where the incident occurred and are divided into:

first aid (artificial respiration and chest compressions);
further resuscitation measures carried out by resuscitators (direct cardiac massage, through a chest incision, use of a defibrillator, administration of drugs that stimulate the heart).

First aid for clinical death

First aid in case of clinical death is carried out before the arrival of resuscitators, so as not to waste precious time, after which the processes become irreversible due to. Clinical death, first aid measures:

The person is unconscious, the first thing you need to do is check the presence/absence of a pulse; to do this, for 10 seconds, lightly press your fingers against the anterior cervical surface where the carotid arteries pass.
The pulse is not detected, then you need to make a precordial blow (a strong single blow to the sternum with a fist) to interrupt ventricular fibrillation.
Call an ambulance. It is important to say that the person is in a state of clinical death.
Before the arrival of specialists, if the precordial stroke does not help, you need to proceed to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Placing a person on a hard surface, preferably on the floor, on a soft surface, all resuscitation measures are not effective!
Tilt the victim's head back by placing your hand on his forehead to raise his chin and push out his lower jaw; if there are removable dentures, remove them.
Pinch the victim’s nose tightly and begin to exhale air from the mouth into the victim’s mouth, this should not be done too quickly so as not to cause vomiting;
Add indirect cardiac massage to artificial respiration; for this, the protrusion of one palm is placed on the lower third of the chest, the second palm is placed with the protrusion on the first, arms are straightened: the chest is pressed in with a confident jerk-like movement in adults by 3 - 4 cm, in children by 5 - 6 cm . The frequency of compressions and air injections is 15:2 (15 compressions on the sternum, then 2 injections and the next cycle) if one person performs resuscitation and 5:1 if two.
If the person is still without signs of life, resuscitation is carried out until doctors arrive.

What did people who experienced clinical death see?

What do people say after clinical death? The stories of those who experienced a short-term exit from the body are similar to each other, this is the fact that life after death exists. Many scientists are skeptical about this, arguing that everything that people see on the edge is generated by the part of the brain responsible for imagination, which functions for another 30 seconds. During clinical death, people see the following scenes:

A corridor, a tunnel, climbing a mountain and at the end it is always bright, blinding, attracting, there can be a tall figure with outstretched arms.
A look at the body from the outside. During clinical and biological death, a person sees himself lying on the operating table, if death occurred during an operation, or in the place where death occurred.
Meeting with loved ones who died.
Return to the body - before this moment, people often hear a voice that says that the person has not yet completed his earthly affairs, so he is sent back.

Films about clinical death

“Secrets of Death” is a documentary about clinical death and the secrets of life after death. The phenomenon of clinical death makes it possible to understand that death is not the end; those who have gone through it and returned back confirm this. The film teaches you to appreciate every moment of life. Clinical and biological death is a very popular topic in modern cinema, so for lovers of the mysterious and unidentified, you can watch the following films about death:

« Between Heaven and Earth / Just Like Heaven" David, a landscape designer, moves to a new apartment after the death of his wife, but a strange thing happens: a girl, Elizabeth, lives in the apartment and she is trying by all means to get him out of the apartment. At some point, Elizabeth walks through the wall and David realizes that he tells her about it.
« 90 minutes in heaven / 90 Minutes in Heaven" Pastor Don Piper gets into an accident, rescuers who arrive at the scene pronounce him dead, but 90 minutes later a team of resuscitators brings Don back to life. The pastor says that clinical death became a happy moment for him; he saw heaven.
« Flatliners" Courtney, a medical student who strives to become an excellent doctor, speaks in front of a group of professors, researching interesting cases of patients who have experienced clinical death and finds herself thinking that she herself is interested in seeing and feeling what happened to the patients.

You can pull a person out of the other world not only in those 5-7 minutes, but also in much more. But there are several development options here. If a person is resuscitated under normal conditions later than this period, within the next 10 or even 20 minutes, then such a “lucky person”, by and large, will not have to bear the proud title of “man”. The reason is as a result of the onset of decortication and even decerebration. To put it simply, a person will not be aware of himself and will simply be a plant. At best, he will be insane.

However, there are situations when successful resuscitation can last the same tens of minutes and the rescued person will be completely capable and generally normal. This happens when conditions are created to slow down the degeneration of the higher parts of the brain, which is accompanied by anoxia (lack of oxygen), hypothermia (cooling) and even severe electrical damage.

History is simply teeming with such cases, from biblical times to modern times. For example, in 1991, a French fisherman discovered the lifeless body of an 89-year-old woman who committed suicide. The resuscitation team was unable to revive her, but when she was taken to the hospital, she revived along the way, thus spending at least 30 minutes in the next world.

But this is not the limit at all. One of the most amazing stories happened in the USSR in March 1961. A certain 29-year-old tractor driver V.I. Kharin was driving along a deserted road in Kazakhstan. However, as often happens, the engine stalled and he set off on foot in the cold. However, the journey was long, which is not surprising for these places, and at one point the unlucky tractor driver decided to take a nap from fatigue and, very likely, from a little too much alcohol. Without realizing it, he began to sculpt one of the most fantastic cases in history, for which he only had to lie down in a snowdrift. He lay there for at least 4 hours before he was found. It is not possible to determine when he died. The fact is that he was found completely numb...

When Dr. P. S. Abrahamyan decided, for an unknown reason, to perform resuscitation, the characteristics of the tractor driver were as follows: the body was completely stiff and when tapped on it, a dull sound was made, like from wood; the eyes were open and covered with a film; there was no breathing; there was no pulse; the body temperature on the surface was negative. In other words, a corpse. Having found such a person, it is unlikely that anyone would think of trying to revive him. But Abrahamyan decided to try his luck. Oddly enough, he managed to do this by warming up, cardiac massage and artificial respiration. As a result, the “corpse” not only came to life, but also remained completely healthy in head. The only thing was that he had to part with his fingers. A similar incident occurred in 1967 in Tokyo, when a truck driver decided to cool off in his refrigerator. The situation was almost the same. In both cases, the victims remained alive after many hours of death.

Largely thanks to these cases, in the 60-80s of the twentieth century, the topic of cryonics received a new explosion of interest throughout the world. After such cases, like it or not, you will believe in her. However, as noted in another book in this series, this area is unpromising due to the fact that during final freezing, human tissue is destroyed due to the fact that it consists of three-quarters water, which expands when frozen. Perhaps in the cases described above it simply did not come to this completely. In the case of the tractor driver, only the fingers were completely frozen, and they were removed. A few more tens of minutes in the cold and he would definitely die. However, such times are more the exception to the rule than the norm. Perhaps this was facilitated by excess alcohol in the blood, but no mention of this has survived anywhere to this day.

In the long-term preservation of a person in clinical death, first of all, it is not anoxia that plays a key role, but hypothermia. Because it is in the presence of only the second factor that all the known records in this direction were set, in which several people compete with the tractor driver from Kazakhstan. But the presence of both factors will still not allow you to stay in a revived state for more than 40-45 minutes. For example, Vegard Sletemunen from the Norwegian city of Lilistrom fell into a frozen river at the age of five, but they were able to resuscitate him after 40 minutes. While the tractor driver’s rivals, according to their assurances, were in the next world for up to 4 hours and this always happened in winter (often Canada and the USA). Some of these people, following the cherished rule of American capitalism, even wrote books about their misadventures.

However, all these achievements also look lackluster. If you believe one case that happened in Mongolia. There the little boy lay in the cold - 34 degrees for 12 hours...

When it comes to prolongation of death, in no case should these cases be confused with deep lethargy or the usual slowdown of vital processes. We have all heard about how people are declared dead, but then they come back to life, and easily within a couple of days. Naturally, it was not death. The doctors simply could not recognize the signs of life because they were barely noticeable. A similar incident occurred at the morgue where my mother worked as a histologist in the early 1990s. The man was long dead when the pathologist attempted to begin the autopsy. However, at the first prick of the scalpel, he perked up and jumped up. Since then, the doctor’s professional passion for laboratory alcohol has worsened significantly.

In clinical practice, it is also possible to prolong the moment of final death. For example, this is achieved by cooling the brain, various pharmacological agents, and fresh blood transfusion. Therefore, in special cases, doctors can prolong the state of clinical death for several tens of minutes, but this is difficult and very expensive, so such procedures are not used for the average person. If previously it was common practice to bury almost every tenth person alive, even now doctors often do not perform procedures that can save one person out of every few dozen.

The term “Clinical death” became entrenched in the official medical lexicon at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, although it was used back in the 19th century. It is used in cases where the patient’s heart has stopped beating, which means that the blood circulation that supplies the body with oxygen, without which life is impossible, has stopped.

However, cells have some metabolic reserve on which they can survive for a short time without oxygen enrichment. Bone tissue, for example, can last for hours, but nerve cells in the brain die much faster - from 2 to 7 minutes. It is during this time that a person needs to be brought back to life. If this succeeds, then in such cases they say that the person experienced clinical death.

It is believed that it is in the brain that those amazing experiences that people who have experienced clinical death testify to are formed.

The striking similarity of memories of clinical death

Many are amazed at how similar the memories of people who have experienced clinical death are: they always contain light, a tunnel, visions. Skeptics ask questions: are they fabricated? Mystics and apologists of the paranormal believe that the similarity of the experiences of those who rose from a state of clinical death proves the reality of the other world.

Visions are generated moments before clinical death

From the point of view of modern science, there is an answer to these questions. According to medical models of the functioning of the body, when the heart stops, the brain freezes and its activity stops. This means that no matter what experience a person experiences, in the state of clinical death itself he does not and cannot have sensations, and therefore memories. Consequently, the vision of the tunnel, and the presence of supposedly otherworldly forces, and light - all this is generated before clinical death, literally a few moments before it.

What determines the similarity of memories in this case? Nothing more than the similarity of our human organisms. The picture of the onset of clinical death is the same for thousands of people: the heart beats worse, oxygen enrichment of the brain does not occur, and hypoxia sets in. Relatively speaking, the brain is half asleep, half hallucinating - and each vision can be associated with its own type of disrupted functioning.

Clinical death for real

An overwhelming feeling of euphoria, unexpected peace and goodness are not harbingers of the afterlife, but a consequence of a sharp increase in the concentration of serotonin. In ordinary life, this neurotransmitter regulates our feeling of joy. Studies conducted in Germany under the leadership of A. Wutzler showed that during clinical death, the concentration of serotonin increases at least three times.

Tunnel vision

Many people report seeing a corridor (or tunnel) as well as a light at the end of the tunnel. Doctors explain this by the effect of “tunnel vision”. The fact is that in ordinary life we see with our eyes only a clear spot of color in the center, and a cloudy black and white periphery. But from infancy our brain is able to synthesize pictures, creating a holistic field of vision. When the brain experiences a shortage of resources, signals from the periphery of the retina are not processed, which causes the characteristic vision.

The longer the hypoxia, the more the brain begins to mix external signals with internal ones, hallucinating: believers at these moments see God/the devil, the souls of their deceased loved ones, while in people who do not have a religious consciousness, episodes of their lives flash by super intensely.

Leaving the body

Just before “disconnecting” from life, the human vestibular apparatus ceases to behave in a normal way, and people experience a feeling of ascension, flight, leaving the body.

There is also the following point of view regarding this phenomenon: many scientists do not consider out-of-body experiences as something paranormal. It is experienced, yes, but it all depends on what consequences we attribute to it. According to Dmitry Spivak, a leading specialist at the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, there is a little-known statistics according to which about 33% of all people have at least once experienced an out-of-body experience and perceive themselves from the outside.

The scientist studied the states of consciousness of women during childbirth: according to his data, every 10th woman in labor felt as if she saw herself from the outside. From here the conclusion is drawn that such an experience is the result of a mental program that is triggered in extreme states, built deep at the psyche level. And clinical death is an example of extreme stress.

People after clinical death - are there any consequences?

One of the most mysterious things about clinical death is its consequences. Even if a person was able to be “returned from the other world,” can we confidently say that the same person returned from the “other world”? There are many documented examples of personality changes occurring in patients - here are 3 stories from reports of near-death experiences in the United States:

teenager Harry returned to life, but did not retain any traces of his former cheerfulness and friendly disposition. After the incident, he began to show so much anger that even his family found it difficult to cope with “this man.” As a result, his relatives made his permanent place of residence a separate house for guests in order to have as little contact with him as possible. His behavior became violent to a dangerous level.
A 3-year-old girl, who had been in a coma for 5 days, behaved in a completely unexpected way: she began to demand alcohol, despite the fact that she had never tried it before. In addition, she developed kleptomania and a passion for smoking.
married woman Heather H. was admitted to the department with a skull injury, as a result of which blood circulation in the brain was disrupted and clinical death occurred. Despite the severity and extent of the damage, she returned to life, and more than richly: her desire for sexual contact became constant and irresistible. Doctors call it "nymphomania." Result: the husband filed for divorce, and the court granted it.

Does clinical death remove the blocking of social prohibitions?

There are no studies that would give a definite answer about the nature of such changes, but there is a fairly realistic hypothesis.

Clinical death- reversible stage of dying, the transition period between life and biological death. At this stage, the activity of the heart and the breathing process stop, all external signs of the body’s vital activity completely disappear. At the same time, hypoxia (oxygen starvation) does not cause irreversible changes in the organs and systems that are most sensitive to it. This period of terminal state, with the exception of rare and occasional cases, lasts on average no more than 3-4 minutes, maximum 5-6 minutes (at initially low or normal body temperature). Survival is possible.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Clinical death and the afterlife

✪ The attitude of the Church towards survivors of clinical death.

✪ Clinical death. How scientists fool us.

Subtitles

Signs of clinical death

Signs of clinical death include: coma, apnea, asystole. This triad concerns the early period of clinical death (when several minutes have passed since asystole), and does not apply to those cases when there are already clear signs of biological death. The shorter the period between the declaration of clinical death and the start of resuscitation measures, the greater the patient’s chances of life, therefore diagnosis and treatment are carried out in parallel.

Treatment

The main problem is that the brain almost completely stops working soon after cardiac arrest. It follows that in a state of clinical death, a person, in principle, cannot feel or experience anything.

There are two ways to explain this problem. According to the first, human consciousness can exist independently of the human brain. And near-death experiences could well serve as confirmation of the existence of an afterlife. Most scientists consider such experiences to be hallucinations caused by cerebral hypoxia. According to this point of view, near-death experiences are experienced by people not in a state of clinical death, but at earlier stages of brain death during the period of the preagonal state or agony, as well as during the coma, after the patient has been resuscitated. Contrary to this, science knows of cases where patients, recovering from a state of clinical death thanks to resuscitation actions, later said that they remember what happened in the place where they were resuscitated, including the actions of resuscitators down to the smallest detail [ ] . From a medical point of view, this is impossible, if only because there is practically no brain activity.

From the point of view of pathological physiology, these sensations are quite naturally caused. As a result of hypoxia, brain function is inhibited from top to bottom from the neocortex to the archeocortex.

The sensation of flying or falling occurs as a result of ischemia. There is a lack of oxygen for the vestibular analyzer, as a result of which the brain stops analyzing and adequately perceiving data coming from the receptors of the vestibular apparatus.

Also, in some cases, this condition may be accompanied by specific hallucinations. For religious people, these can indeed be pictures of the afterlife, and what a person sees can vary significantly depending on his life experience and individual characteristics. These hallucinations are often very similar to similar experiences in mental illness.

Clinical death

Clinical death- reversible stage of dying, the transition period between life and death. At this stage, the activity of the heart and breathing stops, all external signs of the body’s vital activity completely disappear. At the same time, hypoxia (oxygen starvation) does not cause irreversible changes in the organs and systems that are most sensitive to it. This period of terminal state, with the exception of rare and casuistic cases, lasts on average no more than 3-4 minutes, maximum 5-6 minutes (at initially low or normal body temperature).

Signs of clinical death

Signs of clinical death include: coma, apnea, asystole. This triad concerns the early period of clinical death (when several minutes have passed since asystole), and does not apply to those cases where there are already clear signs of biological death. The shorter the period between the declaration of clinical death and the start of resuscitation measures, the greater the patient’s chances of life, therefore diagnosis and treatment are carried out in parallel.

Treatment

The main problem is that the brain almost completely stops working soon after cardiac arrest. It follows that in a state of clinical death, a person, in principle, cannot feel or experience anything.

Most scientists consider such experiences to be hallucinations caused by cerebral hypoxia. According to this point of view, near-death experiences are experienced by people not in a state of clinical death, but at earlier stages of brain death during the period of the preagonal state or agony, as well as during the coma, after the patient has been resuscitated.

Notes

Literature

Sumin S.A. Emergency conditions. - Medical Information Agency, 2006. - 800 p. - 4000 copies. - ISBN 5-89481-337-8

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Clear death” is in other dictionaries:

See Death Dictionary of business terms. Akademik.ru. 2001 ... Dictionary of business terms

Deep, but reversible (subject to medical assistance within a few minutes) depression of vital functions up to respiratory and circulatory arrest... Legal Dictionary

Modern encyclopedia

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A state of the body characterized by the absence of external signs of life (cardiac activity and breathing). During K. s. the functions of the central nervous system fade away, but metabolic processes are still preserved in the tissues. K. s.... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

A terminal state (borderline between life and death), in which there are no visible signs of life (cardiac activity, breathing), the functions of the center fade away. nerve. systems, but unlike biol. death, with the restoration of life... ... Natural science. encyclopedic Dictionary

Clinical death- a borderline state between life and death, in which there are no visible signs of life (cardiac activity, breathing), the functions of the central nervous system fade away, but metabolic processes in the tissues are preserved. Lasts a few minutes... Forensic Encyclopedia