In a startling event from the Czech Republic, an elderly woman, aged 88, who was initially pronounced dead, was found to be alive just as she was about to be placed in a coffin. The woman’s spouse had discovered her motionless in bed and, fearing the worst, had promptly called for emergency assistance. He informed the emergency services that she was neither moving nor breathing, leading the paramedics to declare her dead upon their arrival.
Following the initial assessment by the paramedics, coroners were summoned to the couple’s residence. They too affirmed the woman’s demise, and funeral directors were subsequently contacted to transfer the body into a coffin. However, as the funeral directors were preparing to relocate the body, they made a shocking discovery. The woman, who was previously believed to be deceased, exhibited signs of life.
The husband narrated the eerie incident, revealing that the funeral directors had found his wife to be alive just as they were about to remove her body from their home. An ambulance was promptly summoned, and the woman was quickly transported to the hospital.
While this incident may seem like a plot from a horror film, it is not entirely unprecedented in medical history. The Cleveland Clinic refers to this rare medical occurrence as the Lazarus Effect, named after the biblical tale of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus from the dead. This typically happens after a patient has been clinically declared dead following a cardiac arrest and the cessation of CPR.
The Lazarus Effect is distinguished by the patient exhibiting signs of life sometime after being declared dead. These signs of life must persist for more than a few seconds to be considered a manifestation of the Lazarus Effect.
According to the National Institutes of Health, there have been 74 confirmed instances of the Lazarus Effect in the U.S. between 1982 and 2022. The exact cause or reasons behind this rare medical phenomenon remain a mystery.