2024 systematic review<\/a> similarly noted that such experiences can occur among hospice patients and may sometimes be mistaken for delirium. The researchers said healthcare professionals should be aware of the phenomenon and respond to patients’ experiences rather than automatically dismissing them.<\/p>\nBut are they a sign that death is imminent?<\/p>\n
That is harder to establish. Research shows that end-of-life visions can occur in the period leading up to death, but they cannot be used as a reliable way to predict exactly when someone will die. There is also no scientific evidence establishing that the deceased are literally present or that they are \u201ccoming to collect\u201d the dying person.For doctors, an important challenge is distinguishing an end-of-life vision from delirium, particularly in critically ill patients.Delirium can be triggered by severe infection, organ dysfunction, medications, metabolic disturbances and the ICU environment. Patients may become confused, disoriented or experience hallucinations. In someone recovering from pneumonia and sepsis, as in Mantoo’s account, delirium would therefore be a medically important possibility to consider.At the same time, researchers studying ELDVs have argued that not every unusual experience at the end of life should automatically be treated as pathological. A systematic review found that these experiences can have significant emotional meaning for patients and may sometimes provide comfort.<\/p>\n
A phenomenon doctors are still trying to understand<\/p>\n
Similar reports have been documented across cultures. Research from India, for instance, has described dying patients interacting with or speaking to deceased relatives, particularly parents. One study involving families in northern Kerala recorded experiences consistent with deathbed visions in several dying people, while also identifying some cases involving possible confusion.Another study of terminally ill patients receiving home care in rural and urban India reported end-of-life dreams and visions in 63.3% of participants; among those reporting them, seeing deceased relatives, friends or acquaintances was common.For Mantoo, the ICU patient’s words remain a striking reminder that end-of-life care can involve experiences that do not fit neatly into a single medical explanation.Her account does not prove that the man’s deceased family members were actually present. But it does highlight a phenomenon that palliative-care researchers have been documenting for years- and one that doctors may need to listen to carefully while also checking for treatable medical causes such as delirium.The distinction matters: a patient seeing a deceased loved one near the end of life may be experiencing an end-of-life vision, delirium, or another altered state of perception. Medicine can document the experience, but it cannot establish a supernatural explanation for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ICU doctor recalls a patient seeing his deceased mother and sister before his death. An elderly ICU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,465236,465233,465237,465234,137,500,465235,29560],"class_list":["post-895946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-comforting-visions","tag-deathbed-visions","tag-doctor-experiences","tag-end-of-life-dreams","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-icu-delirium","tag-palliative-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u2018Sometimes](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/an-icu-doctor-recalls-a-patient-seeing-his-deceased-mother-and-sister-before-his-death.jpg\" "\\"An")
An ICU doctor recalls a patient seeing his deceased mother and sister before his death. An elderly ICU patient recovering from a serious infection suddenly began talking about people who were not there. His doctors initially thought it could be delirium. An hour later, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died.Dr Sonali Mantoo, MD (@icuinternalmedicine), who shares critical-care experiences on Instagram, recently recounted the case in a video, describing it as one of several experiences that made her pay closer attention to what some dying patients report seeing or hearing.According to Mantoo, the patient was an 84-year-old man who had been recovering from pneumonia and sepsis in the intensive care unit. He was considered stable and was preparing to be transferred to a medical ward. He had some dementia and there was also a language barrier, as he was from Sierra Leone.Then, his behaviour suddenly changed.\u201cHe started suddenly saying things like, \u2018Put my shoes on, tie my laces. My mom’s standing at the door. She’s come to get me. My sister’s with her,\u2019\u201d Mantoo recalled.The medical team looked towards the door but saw nobody. Since the patient was elderly and his mother would have died many years earlier, the team initially considered whether he was experiencing ICU delirium. Another nurse from Sierra Leone was called in because of the language barrier, while another nurse went to get haloperidol, a medication commonly used to manage severe agitation or delirium.\u201cBut an hour later he coded and died,\u201d Mantoo said.Reflecting on the experience, she said she has seen similar situations enough times to believe that doctors may encounter things around the end of life that are not always easy to explain.\u201cWhen patients do give you an inkling that their dead relatives have come to collect them, maybe it’s time to evaluate them a little closely,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n