Does Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest for Aortic Surgery Trigger Near-Death Experience? Incidence of Near-Death Experiences after Aortic Surgeries Performed under Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest.
Aorta April 1, 2021 Marion Mauduit, Amedeo Anselmi, Jacques Tomasi et al.
During aortic surgery that uses hypothermic circulatory arrest (HCA) to temporarily stop blood flow, no patients reported a near-death experience (NDE). In a prospective study of 101 patients who had thoracic aortic surgery, 67 procedures used HCA with an average arrest time of about 27 minutes and a mean body temperature of 23.7°C. None of the patients recalled anything from their period of unconsciousness, and none scored positively on the Greyson NDE scale. The authors note that factors related to anesthesia or how NDEs were evaluated may have prevented recollections, so whether HCA can trigger NDEs remains unknown.