"Lazarus Syndrome": spontaneous resurrection

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

"Lazarus Syndrome": how the human body reanimates itself in seemingly critical situations. And scientists are sure that this happens quite often.

Colombian Noelia Serna was admitted to Cali University Hospital with a heart attack. In intensive care, she had a second attack, after which the patient was pronounced dead. A few hours later, the funeral agency officials who began embalming the "corpse" noticed that the woman was moving and returned her to the hospital.

American Anthony Yale ended up in the intensive care unit after experiencing sleep apnea. A few hours later, his heart stopped. For 45 minutes, the patient was tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate and was eventually pronounced dead. After the doctors stopped all efforts, Yale's son, who entered the ward, noticed weak heart activity on the monitor. Resuscitation was continued and the man eventually survived.

These are just two examples of a phenomenon called in medicine "Lazarus syndrome" or self-reanimation - the spontaneous restoration of a normal heart rate after failed attempts at medical resuscitation and the death of a patient. The name, as you can understand, comes from the biblical legend about the revival of Lazarus by Jesus Christ.

The first time "Lazarus syndrome" was recorded in 1982, and until recently it was believed that since then the phenomenon has occurred 38 times. Recently, however, four European scientists - Les Gorodon, Mathieu Pasquier, Hermann Burger and Peter Paal - after searching the medical literature, counted 65 described cases of this syndrome, 22 patients survived as a result, 18 of them without any neurological consequences.

But, apparently, "Lazarus syndrome" occurs much more often, it is just that not all cases of it are recorded and reflected in the scientific literature. Surveys conducted several years ago among ambulance doctors and hospital resuscitators showed that up to half of them faced a similar phenomenon in their practice.

Les Gorodon and his co-authors rightly point out that in Britain alone there are about 1,900 resuscitators, which gives rise to serious thought, on the one hand, about how often people come back to life after unsuccessful resuscitation, and on the other, about how how many lives may not have been saved because the patient was pronounced dead too soon.

Speaking about the 22 cases in which patients survived after self-resuscitation, Herman Burger notes that although this figure may seem small, in fact the consequences are quite significant, taking into account all factors, including the number of patients who are admitted to intensive care every day.

The causes of the "Lazarus syndrome" remain unknown, but scientists are sure that it is necessary, firstly, to collect as much information as possible about this phenomenon, and secondly, to convey it to resuscitators. Based on the data on the 65 cases that they were able to identify, Gorodon and his team carried out statistical calculations and found that most often the syndrome occurred in patients over 60 years old, in almost half of the patients signs of life appeared five minutes after the end of resuscitation, in one fifth of cases - in the interval from 6 to 10 minutes. However, sometimes "Lazarus syndrome" manifested itself in a few hours.

The record is believed to be held by West Virginia resident Velma Thomas. After three consecutive cardiac arrests, doctors did not record any activity in her brain for 17 hours. According to her son, who was present at the hospital, her skin had already begun to harden, her hands and toes were numb. But ten minutes after turning off the equipment, Velma began to breathe and move.

It is impossible to track all patients for such a long time, however, Gorodon and his co-authors strongly recommend observing the electrocardiogram for at least ten minutes after the unsuccessful end of resuscitation actions - it is during this time, as they were able to establish, that "Lazarus syndrome" most often manifests itself …