- Clinical death: definition
- Clinical death: causes
- Clinical death: relationships
- Clinical death: why is it sometimes used in medicine?
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Clinical death is one of the many definitions of death, next to, among others, biological death and brain death. Clinical death - especially its symptoms - is of interest to both doctors and patients - it is a special condition, if only because of the descriptions of the experiences of those who experienced it. It would seem that clinical death is an extremely unfavorable phenomenon, but in practice … sometimes patients treated for various diseases are deliberately introduced into this state. Learn the definition and causes of clinical death.
Contents:
- Clinical death: definition
- Clinical death: causes
- Clinical death: relationships
- Clinical death: why is it sometimes used in medicine?
Clinical deathis a stage as natural in human life as birth. Although, contrary to appearances, death is quite a complex process. The first, essentially, phenomenon that precedes human death is agony - during it, life functions gradually begin to subside, but agony is not synonymous with death.
It is followed by clinical death, and then biological death occurs. Generally, there is a lot to talk about death (there is even a separate discipline of science that is focused on issues related to human dying - it is thanatology), but one of the issues that concerns death and which is of greatest interest is the above-mentioned death clinical.
Clinical death: definition
Theoretically, it would seem that clinical death is tantamount to death - in her case, blood circulation in the body stops completely, cardiac activity stops and respiratory arrest. However, the feature that clearly distinguishes clinical death from biological death is that in the case of the former, the electrical activity of the brain is not stopped - in patients who are clinically dead, it is possible to demonstrate the above-mentioned brain activity by electroencephalography (EEG).
The second feature, which also significantly draws the line between clinical and biological death, is that the former is not irreversible - when appropriately quickly and properly appliedafter performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation), it is possible to make the patient show signs of life again.
The clinical death, however, is only reversible for some time. As mentioned above, it is referred to when the patient's blood is not circulating and the respiration is not sustained - both phenomena lead to the fact that the central nervous system is not supplied with oxygen.
This gas is necessary for the functioning of all body cells, but the cells of the nervous system are particularly sensitive to its deficiency and, for example, skin cells can survive up to 12 hours without oxygen supply, so neurons start dying after 4-5 hours minutes after the gas was stopped from reaching them.
If it really happens - means when the cells of the nervous system die - then clinical death turns into biological death. It is because of this kind of dependency that a patient in a clinical death state can only be saved for a strictly limited time.
There are, however, some exceptions to the above time frame after which the cells of the nervous system die - which is about 5 minutes - however. First of all, we are talking about hypothermia, i.e. lower body temperature. During this process, cellular metabolism is much slower and then neurons die much slower, not after a few, but only after several minutes.
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Clinical death: causes
Bring the brain to a state in which the electrical activity of the brain, despite the lack of signs of life, will be preserved, perhaps in many states. The cause of clinical death may be both an accident leading to cardiac arrest and the trauma experienced during it, as well as this state may precede biological death from completely natural causes.
Clinical death: relationships
Clinical death is generally of interest not because resuscitation can bring the patient back to life. First and foremost, it is of interest to patients and doctors because of the experiences from people who experienced the condition.
These people often mention that at a time when they were essentially on the verge of life and death, they saw a tunnel through which they could walk towards the light. It also happens that patients who experienced clinical death report that it was during itthey were above their body and could hear the voices of people near their body. Some people with clinical death also mention religious experiences such as meeting with god.
It happens that after clinical death, even those who were extremely afraid of death suddenly start to say that they actually stop fearing the day they leave this world - they say that death is not really the end, and it is the beginning of some other, sometimes possibly even better, stage.
It is also interesting that people who share the experience of clinical death, and at the same time share their origin (because they are, for example, from completely different continents), age or gender, and attitude to religion (e.g. believers and atheists), yes indeed, they describe the experiences of being on the verge of life and death in a very similar way.
Some scientists who analyze the issue of clinical death show skepticism in this situation - there are reports that in fact the sensations appearing in people in this state could be regarded as hallucinations caused by central nervous system hypoxia or the effect on the cells of the nervous system, toxic metabolites formed in the course of oxygen deficiency. However, it is impossible to say unequivocally where they come from and why the experiences of people who have experienced clinical death are very similar today.
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Clinical death: why is it sometimes used in medicine?
It would seem that, in fact, each type of death is certainly a negative phenomenon, but in practice … clinical death is sometimes used in medicine. Basically, you can even talk about the fact that sometimes medics deliberately bring the patients they treat to this very state.
Stopping breathing and stopping blood circulation and heart rate is sometimes used, for example, during some more serious surgical procedures, including those in the field of vascular surgery or cardiosurgery. Regardless of whether they are processes caused by pathological phenomena or deliberately, the nervous system requires oxygen to function.
It was mentioned above that the time taken for the cells of the nervous system to die increases as the body temperature lowers - this is whyTherefore, primarily for the safety of patients, surgeries that require patients to be clinically dead are performed after inducing hypothermia.