The Schwaninger study: 174 cardiac arrests and 7 near-death experiences

Step 1

Before the study · The question

Almost everything known came from memories of years before

In 1975, the physician Raymond Moody gave near-death experiences their name. In the years that followed, almost every researcher collected accounts from people describing what they had been through long before.

A few studies gave figures. In 1977, the cardiologist Michael Sabom and a colleague asked 50 patients who had come close to dying. 11 described an NDE. In 1983, another study asked 32 college students who had been close to death, and 7 described one.

Those people almost always told their experience much later, sometimes years later. And researchers didn’t know how many people had come close to dying without experiencing anything.

To find out, someone had to ask everyone who survived a cardiac arrest, and do it within a few days.

Step 2

St. Louis, Missouri · According to the study

A cardiology nurse organizes the study at her hospital

Janet Schwaninger led the study. She was a nurse who coordinated heart care at a large university hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

Three researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine worked with her. Paul Eisenberg was the physician who ran the cardiac intensive care unit. Alan Weiss was a professor of cardiology. Kenneth Schechtman was the team’s statistician.

The university’s ethics committee approved the study. That committee checks that a study with patients does them no harm.

Step 4

Over those three years · According to the study

Of 174 people with a cardiac arrest, only 30 can tell anything

Over those years, 174 people had a cardiac arrest in the hospital. 119 died. That is 68 in 100.

55 survived. 25 of them could not be interviewed. Some had brain damage, and others still had a breathing tube when they left the hospital.

That left 30 people. Half were men and half were women. They were between 23 and 86 years old, 60 on average.

The study’s figures come from these 30 people.

Step 5

2 or 3 days after the arrest · According to the study

A few days later, a recorded interview

The team waited at least 24 hours after the arrest. That gave time for the confusion to pass and for the patient to become stable. The interview took place before the patient left the hospital, 2 or 3 days after the arrest on average.

First, the patient described in their own words what they had been through. That way the team didn’t influence them with its questions.

Then came the questions of Kenneth Ring, a psychologist who had studied NDEs in the 1970s. There are 14 questions about the experience, each with several parts, and 5 about the patient’s religion before and after the experience.

Anyone who remembered nothing of the arrest did not go through all the questions. The interview lasted half an hour on average. The patient chose whether it was recorded or written down by hand.

Step 7

At the first interview · According to the study

7 of the 30 people describe an NDE during that arrest

7 people described an NDE during the arrest they had just had. That is 23 in 100 of the people interviewed.

In the drawing, each circle is one person in 100. The 23 filled circles are, roughly, the ones who described an NDE during that arrest. In the study, it was 7 of 30.

Another 4 people did not have an NDE during that arrest. But they described one they had had before, on another occasion when they came close to dying. They told it in as much detail as if it had just happened.

For the comparisons, the team put these 4 people together with the 7 above. That made a group of 11 people with an NDE. The other 19 had never had one. Of those 19, 16 remembered nothing of the arrest and 3 remembered something that did not amount to an NDE.

One of the 7 patients, besides the NDE during the arrest, had already had another one before. This patient said they met the same spiritual being both times.

Step 9

In her NDE · According to the study, in one sentence

A patient says she saw a brother who had died and whom she had never known

Among the cases, the article describes one in a single sentence. A patient said that in her NDE she met a brother of hers who had died and whom she had never known. Later, her parents confirmed that this brother existed.

The article gives no more details. It does not say what she described about the brother, whether she said his name, or whether she had heard about him at home as a child. Nor does it say whether that NDE was the one during the study’s arrest or an earlier one.

Without those details, the case can neither be checked nor ruled out.

Step 10

Six months later · According to the study

Six months later, a questionnaire by mail

Six months after the interview, the team mailed a questionnaire to everyone. 8 of the 11 people with an NDE and 10 of the 19 without one answered. Of those who did not answer, 4 had died and one could not be found. The article does not say why the rest did not answer.

The questionnaire was another one by Kenneth Ring. It has 42 questions about how each person’s life had changed. It asks, for example, about their wish to help others, their faith or the meaning of their life.

The people with an NDE answered that they had changed more than the people without one in 26 of the 42 questions. They said they prayed more, felt God’s presence more, understood others better and found more meaning in life.

But there was no difference in fear of death. At six months, the two groups gave almost the same answer. Their fear of death had not changed. At the first interview, by contrast, 10 of the 11 people with an NDE had said they were less afraid of dying.

The authors point out a problem. They made so many comparisons that some differences may have come out by chance.

Step 11

2002 · According to the study

The study is published, and the authors draw three conclusions

The article was published in the summer of 2002 in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, a journal devoted to near-death experiences. The authors draw three conclusions:

• NDEs are fairly common after a cardiac arrest. 7 of the 30 people interviewed described one.
• An NDE changes a person’s life. According to the authors, those who had one place more value on spirituality, on others and on their own life.
• Talking about the experience helps patients. The 8 people with an NDE who answered the questionnaire said it had helped them a lot to tell it before leaving the hospital. The authors ask hospital staff to learn to listen to these experiences.

The authors acknowledge two limits. Very few people survive a cardiac arrest. And no one can measure someone’s personality before they have an NDE, to compare it with afterward.

The study did not measure anyone’s brain activity. Nor does it know when each person had their experience.

Let’s see what can and can’t be known from these data.