Birmingham is NDE central
Once again, thanks to Peter for sending me the link to this article. Very interesting that one hospital, Heartlands, in Birmingham UK, has so far managed to recruit 16 patients. Considering that the study is looking to recruit 1000-1500 overall, 16 is pretty good for one site. This is possibly why they received a visit from the man himself, Dr Sam Parnia, who congratulated them on their contribution.
Given there are 10 sites involved in this study, then I am hopeful that recruitment would be nearing the 10-20% mark at least, still a long way short of the total needed, but a good start nonetheless. This gives us hope that there will be a “scientific” verification of an OBE before long, provided of course that the subjects enrolled were all “proper” subjects…ie. they survived to be interviewed and the LCD screens were in place for at least part of the resuscitation attempt.
As always we wish Dr Parnia and the AWARE II research team all the very best of luck in their ongoing work.
AwareofAware 
According to the summary of the study,
“It is possible that patients who are able to recount these experiences may have better patient outcomes in terms of reduced brain damage, improved functional ability and better psychological adjustment to the event. We think that these patients may have had better blood flow to the brain during cardiac arrest, leading to consciousness and activity of the mind.”
If they are right,the use of brain oxygen monitoring devices and exclusion of patient who suffered from the brain damage may increased the incidence of NDE.
I hope they are doing right thing,and the data may better than first study.
LikeLike
I think the fact that patients have to survive long enough to be interviewed in the first place is a marked improvement on the first study! Yes, it would also help if they have preserved sufficient brain function to recall any memories of any experiences that occurred during the period they were dead.
From a healthcare/resuscitation science perspective, I think these measurements may be very useful in determining how to improve outcomes. However, the cynical side of me wonders how much of this is included to insure that the protocol has enough valid scientific merit to insure it passes ethics review boards and doesn’t get labelled as nutter science. Of most interest to us “nutters” is not whether better brain oxygenation results in higher chance of NDE [recollection], but whether or not we get a validated OBE. Reducing the chance of including people who can’t remember anything in the first place because they have brain damage will certainly improve those chances.
LikeLike