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There's no shortage of morbid curiosity surrounding death. But according to the researchers behind this project, known as the Death Prediction and Physiology after Removal of Therapy Study, or DePPaRT, there's a lot we don't know for sure about a person's last minutes of life.
Since 2014, they've been collecting vital sign data from dying patients in Canada, the UK, and the Czech Republic as part of their work. Their main goal has been to document as much as possible about the process of dying, particularly in critically ill people who are taken off life support. They've also been studying how and why families decide to donate the organs of their loved ones soon before death and how the donation affects them. People in the study — around 600 in total — were only included after express consent from their families. The project received funding from the Canadian government as well as the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program.
Though some organs, like the kidneys, can be kept viable for over a day before being transplanted, others, like the heart, have to be transplanted within hours. Any delay can be literally the difference between life and death for the organ recipients. But people are understandably sensitive about death, and many families and some doctors may hold out hope of a miraculous recovery even after a person is taken off life support.
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