Lazarus Syndrome, Awaking From the Dead!!!

I have found something that terrifies me and completely amazes me as the same time in the world of medical science. It’s called the Lazarus Syndrome (sometimes called Lazarus phenomenon) , and goes to prove what a fantastic machine the human body really is. I apologise if this has been covered on ATS before but I don’t a quick search and failed to find a thread about this specifically, which to be honest I find rather surprising.

So what is Lazarus syndrome or “spontaneous return of circulation (SROC)”, well the clue is in the name which comes from the Old Testament story of Lazarus of Bethany who it is said Jesus resurrected after he was dead for 4 days. And that is literally what Lazarus syndrome is, waking up from the dead, as in clinically dead. The body literally restarts itself and in some cases there have been no lasting effects and the “dead” person makes a full recovery despite having been declared as dead by a doctor.

The cause of Lazarus Syndrome is unclear however; there are a number of ideas however I could only accurately source this hypothesis from the International Anaesthesia Research society which points to a build up of gas after CPR causing the heart to restart, specifically they said:

A few authors have discussed “auto-PEEP” as a possible mechanism to explain SROC. During CPR, dynamic hyperinflation may develop in a patient with obstructive airway disease because of hyperventilation and inadequate exhalation time. Cessation of ventilation relieves the hyperinflation and the excessive intrathoracic pressure, thus allowing cardiac filling and permitting the spontaneous return of cardiac function

www.anesthesia-analgesia.org...

It is hard to establish the exact number of cases throughout the globe were somebody has awaken from the dead as a result of Lazarus syndrome. It is this that worries me, how many people have been buried as being dead, only for their heart to restart once they are locked away 6 feet underground in that coffin. In truth this would be unlikely firstly because cases are so rare and secondly because it is even rarer for a person’s circulation to restart after 30 minutes. Here are some interesting cases i have found:

A 61 year old woman found declared dead but found alive in the morgue.

Judith Johnson, 61, of Georgetown, Del., was actually having a heart attack when she arrived at the hospital in May 2007. Less than 45 minutes after she arrived, she went into cardiac arrest. records also say she "never regained a pulse," and was declared dead at 8:34 p.m. someone at the morgue noticed Johnson’s “corpse” was still breathing, Louis Johnson learned his wife was very much alive.

www.foxnews.com...

And this from the UK

Mr Wilkinson was pronounced dead by staff at the Royal Preston Hospital on February 1. But 30 minutes after he was given the Last Rites doctors realised that his pulse had returned. He survived for two days before being pronounced dead a second time.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

This one is really scary.

Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face.

www.reuters.com...

This “Lazarus syndrome” is amazing but it is also terrifying. How many people have been buried alive or killed during an autopsy or whist giving organs? I have to be honest I don’t know allot about it medically other than what I have researched and wrote about here so I would be very interested in other peoples thoughts or if anyone has any other information that they could contribute.

I'm not suggesting the syndrome never happens, but many of these examples seem like medical malpractice to me. Whoever declared these people dead did a lousy job.

OTOH I have a friend who "died" in Vietnam. He had an OBE and saw the whole thing. He was taken to the field morgue where he woke up. He says he'll never be afraid of death again.

Yikes, the case about the woman with the cardiac arrest is pretty darn recent! With advances in science, you'd think that every precaution would be taken to make sure somebody is really dead!

It makes you wonder also, if anybody has been embalmed or creamated while still alive, let alone buried!

In the past, they used to have bells attatched to some coffins, just in case a mistake had been made! I wonder if they were actually ever successful in alerting to a live person buried?

australianmuseum.net.au...

Many designs included ropes which, when pulled, would ring the church bell, or a purpose-mounted bell.

reply to post by schuyler


I can understand why somebody might think that but this is literally when a person i dead, no pulse, no brain activity they are dead. Confirmed by doctors and surgeons, its now recognised in the medical community.

reply to post by Blanca Rose


Yeah that’s my point, i was reading one article that suggested monitoring all patients who receive CPR for 15 minutes after their death, but it was just a recommendation.

reply to post by kevinunknown


You know though, in 2009, my sister-in-laws mother died while we were all in the room. She took a last breath, the pulse ox machine showed a flat line (attatched to her finger) and the alarm went off.

We called a nurse into the room, and she just checked with a stethascope, and declared the woman, dead, and then called a Dr. into the room who did the same thing.

In no way, did they check this woman for brain activity. I was there, I witnessed the whole thing.

Yes, she was actually dead, but how do we know in fact, that everything is checked, to be absolutely sure?

We don't, and that is why things like this happen, and they are malpratice!

edit to add:

The woman who died, was an RN and a board director for the hospital. You'd think they would have really checked with her, more carefully!




[edit on 29-7-2010 by Blanca Rose]

reply to post by Blanca Rose


That’s quite interesting, sorry for your loss. I think it would depend on her diagnosis, like i said i don’t really know any more about this than the research i done for writing the OP.

reply to post by kevinunknown


Thanks for your thoughts, she was my husbands Step Mother. They didn't even know each other until about 5 years ago.

I only knew her a couple of years, and she was a tough old broad! She had said for a couple of years that she was ready to go, a die hard smoker who said she wanted a lit cigarette plopped in her mouth, during her wake, and an unlit one in her mouth when the coffin was closed.

She died of COPD.

i have a friend who happens to be pathologist and she made an autopsy on someone and when they opened his thoracyc cage they realised the heart was frebrilating..but the body was wide opened, the lungs removed and they have also removed the intestins. 0_o what do you do in that case...you dont tell

reply to post by SSimon


Oh, my gosh! I guess you call the donor programs, and salvage what you can!

Does you friend have nightmares?

I have read under medical anolmalies, that the body is also amazing when it kicks out things after death. There was one report of a pregnant woman who died in an accident. She was was dead for sure. they buried her.
Later, involving the case, they had to exhume (bring up) her body again for further examining of eveidence......when they opened the coffin, there was not just one body, but two! The womans body, even after death had kicked out the fetus.

and yes, it does make me wonder how many poor folks were buried and presumed really dead. One good thing I can say about crematin is there is no turning back, no chance for someone to come back to life (not in some coffin).

Well in the West it's not much of a worry to be buried alive that way, since they remove your body's innards shortly after you die in order to be exposed, or cremate your body soon enough. Ironically, once you are clinically reported as "dead", they make sure you are dead enough!

But yes it is troubling to think of all these people in the past who might have ended up waking up in a grave. Gloomy indeed!

reply to post by SSimon

Your post is now featured in my most-disturbing-posts list .

reply to post by kevinunknown

Yes I too find Lazarus syndrome incredible. It basically makes some long established medical "facts" moot. If you take modern medicine literally, such phenomena is impossible to happen, yet it happened far too many times to be ignored.

This is a personal experience I had while working as a Nurses Aide a decade ago.

We had an gentleman as a patient who was most likely a stroke patient, I cannot remember what brought him to us. We had him hooked up to telemetry, his nutrition was supplied to his stomach via a nasal tube. He was only with us a short time as I recall.

The alarm went off at the telemetry station and a Code Blue was announced. His heart had stopped. The crash cart was brought in but not to revive him because this patient had a DNR order (Do Not Resuscitate). I was entering the room just as the leads were being attached to detect brain activity.

I looked down at him and one nurse confirmed that his heart was stopped, but I could clearly see him breathing. They hooked him up and sure enough there was no brain activity at all; he continued breathing.

I stayed in the room a total of 20 minutes until his breathing finally stopped. I asked how this could be and they told me that he must have had a strong chemical makeup to continue his chest muscles and diaphragm over the last 20 minutes.

I must say, it was rather creepy to see him laying there dead but still breathing. I just cannot imagine how a family member would cope under such circumstances, being told the patient is dead but looking down at him and seeing him breathing; in and out, in and out, his chest rose and air moved. I am not kidding!

Needless to say, he was an indigent and did not have family. It was a 4 day weekend because of some Holiday (I believe it was Christmas) and he had to wait until the Courthouse reopened so a judge could sign an order of release of body to the State. We didn't have a morgue in our facility so we moved him into a walk in closet for supplies. He remained there the entire weekend. I couldn't help myself but I did check in on him several times over that weekend to make sure he was OK.

He must of had a Hell of a sense of humor in life! LOL Bless his Soul!

This was a common fear in Victorian England where as mentioned by a poster above bells were attached to long chains into the coffin should someone be buried alive they could ring the bell to gain attention. This fear apparently peaked during the Cholera epidemics of 18th 19th century.

This is also where the terms saved by the bell and dead ringer originate from. Someone would be elected to sit in the graveyard at night and wait for the sounds of the bell.

en.wikipedia.org...

friendsofoakgrovecemetery.org...

www.xomba.com...

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


I think that this is so rare, that we don’t need to go back to using the bells. Never knew it saved people though

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


That just gave me chills...I had no idea that's where that saying came from!
Interesting thread btw!

Originally posted by kevinunknown
reply to post by schuyler

 

I can understand why somebody might think that but this is literally when a person i dead, no pulse, no brain activity they are dead. Confirmed by doctors and surgeons, its now recognised in the medical community.

It's really too bad these anecdotes don't have interviews with the formerly dead persons. My guess is there would be som every strange tales out of them.

reply to post by starsyren


Yeah gives me the chills as well.

reply to post by schuyler

It's really too bad these anecdotes don't have interviews with the formerly dead persons. My guess is there would be som every strange tales out of them.

There are plenty of interviews of people who've experienced this phenomenon. They're NDE's (Near Death Experiences). The majority of those who experience death and come back to life say they will never fear death again.