New research suggests that, fortunately, doctors are adept at correctly identifying the time of a person’s death, a crucial aspect in ensuring healthy organs for donation. At the same time, the body can sometimes show movements of cardiac activity even after death has become truly irreversible, according to the to study published in the New England of Medicine.
There is no lack of morbid curiosities about death. But, according to the researchers behind this project, known as the study of the prediction and physiology of death after withdrawal from therapy, or DePPaRT, there are many things we do not know for sure about the last minutes of life. of a person.
Since 2014 they have been collecting vital sign data from dying patients in Canada, the UK and the Czech Republic as part of their work. Its main goal has been to document as much as possible about the process of dying, especially in people with critical illnesses who do not have life support. They have also been studying how and why families decide to donate the organs of their loved ones shortly before they die and how the donation affects them. The people in the study (about 600 in total) were only included after the express consent of their families. The project received funding from the Canadian government, as well as from the Canadian Donation and Transplant Research Program.
While some organs, such as the kidneys, can remain viable for more than a day before being transplanted, others, such as the heart, must be transplanted within a few hours. Any delay can be literally the difference between life and death for organ recipients. But people are understandably sensitive to death, to many families, and to some doctors can hold out hope for a miraculous recovery even after a person’s life support is withdrawn.
G / O Media may receive a commission
“We recognize that there are stories about people coming back to life, even members of the medical community. So we wanted to provide scientific evidence about the process of dying, to dispel any potential myths for people, ”project lead researcher Sonny Dhanani, a pediatrician at the CHEO Research Institute in Ontario, told Gizmodo by phone.
Today, doctors in Canada are he said wait at least five minutes after blood flow has stopped after vital maintenance is completed before officially calling at the time of a person’s death (in the US, two to five minutes is recommended). In the patients this team studied, there were no cases in which doctors were wrong about the determination of death. That said, the film’s death sign, an immediate flat line on an EKG monitor, was also not entirely correct.
Sometimes, in approximately 14% of patients, there were moments of cardiac activity on-off. It is important to note, however, that these moments usually last for a few seconds and did not cause the heart to restart completely or people to wake up suddenly. The longest time it took a heart to stop completely was about four minutes, indicating that the five-minute rule is, in fact, a good time to wait for the determination of death (if the heart restarts during this period, doctors will wait another five minutes before declaring the time of death).
“Doctors and families should be aware that this happens 14% of the time. But they also need to be assured that this does not mean that the person will come back to life, ”Dhanani said.
This peace of mind is too important for families, especially when it comes to making decisions about organ donation. Of course, people can also offer this permission if they pre-register as donor organs.
Dhanani and his team were surprised by the number of families who chose to participate in the project when asked (93%). And he hopes his team’s work will help people better recognize the benefits of organ donation, while putting peace of mind in the process.
“Ultimately, we want our research to help open up conservation around death, dying, and donation, which are topics that can be uncomfortable,” he said. “And we hope that this research can reassure people concerned about the idea of being a donor, perhaps because they fear that their organs will be taken before they die. The donation has a clear process and our research has shown that people will not be mistreated. “