News summary
- An elderly woman was presumed dead and was found alive hours later by the funeral home.
- A specialist discovered a slight pulse in the woman’s body and called an ambulance.
- The elderly woman returned to the hospital but died early in the evening of the same day.
Elderly woman is presumed dead and later found alive. Freepik
A 90yearold woman who was reported dead at the San Juan de Dios hospital in Zaragoza, northeastern Spain, was found alive at a funeral home a few hours after her death was confirmed. A thanatopractitioner, a professional responsible for preserving, disinfecting and restoring the appearance of a corpse for burial, detected a slight pulse and called an ambulance.
The elderly woman returned to the hospital but died the same day. Early in the evening, doctors again declared her dead.
In a statement, the hospital said emergency medical services workers brought the elderly woman back to the health center “in a nonreactive coma” (meaning the absence of any motor or autonomic response to stimuli). The facility also said that “hospital staff accompanied the family at all times” and that an internal investigation had been launched to investigate the matter.
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According to local newspaper ABC Aragão, the elderly woman’s family reported the situation to authorities and police are also investigating the case. The aim is to find out whether there was “medical negligence” and whether the transfer of the elderly woman caused her health to worsen.
Although these are exceptional cases, such cases occur “relatively frequently” in seriously ill patients. According to information from the health center to the local newspaper Heraldo de Aragón, in some cases the body causes the heart to beat again, even though the pulse indicates that the person is still alive.