Near-death experiences in non-life-threatening events and coma of different etiologies.

Near death experiences (NDEs) are increasingly being reported as a clearly identifiable physiological and psychological reality of clinical significance. Empirical studies of NDEs have mostly been conducted in patients with life threatening situations such as cardiac arrest [1-5] or (albeit more rarely) in patients with severe traumatic brain injury[6]. To the best of our knowledge, no study has formally compared the influence of the cause of coma to the intensity or content of the NDE. Using the Greyson NDE scale [7], the present retrospective study aimed at: (1) exploring the NDE intensity and content in “NDE-like” accounts following non-life-threatening events versus “real NDE” following coma; (2) comparing the “real NDE” characteristics according to the etiology of the brain damage (anoxic, traumatic or other) and; (3) comparing our retrospectively obtained data in anoxic coma to historical previously published prospectively collected post-anoxic NDEs