A "dying gasp" is medically known as agonal breathing or agonal respiration. It is a reflex that occurs in a person who is near death, typically due to a severe medical emergency like a cardiac arrest or stroke.
Agonal breathing or agonal respirations are medical terms used to describe insufficient breathing that often sounds like snoring, snorting, gasping, or labored breathing. The person will appear to be choking or having an involuntary gasp reflex.
Agonal breathing is characterized by a gasping, labored, or irregular breath that may seem dramatic or unsettling to loved ones, but it is a natural part of the dying process.
Agonal respiration. Agonal respiration, gasping respiration, or agonal breathing is a distinct and abnormal pattern of breathing and brainstem reflex characterized by gasping labored breathing and is accompanied by strange vocalizations and myoclonus.
Agonal breathing is a near-death condition where a person gasps and moans.
Gasping respiration in the dying patient is the last respiratory pattern prior to terminal apnoea. The duration of the gasping respiration phase varies; it may be as brief as one or two breaths to a prolonged period of gasping lasting minutes or even hours.
Sudden death, terminal illness, organ failure, and frailty are the four most common types of illness trajectories found in end-of-life care.
phrase. You describe something as the last gasp to emphasize that it is the final part of something or happens at the last possible moment. [emphasis] ...the last gasp of a dying system of censorship.
The death rattle sounds like a wet, gurgling, or rattling sound as patients breathe. This sound can resemble gentle bubbling or crackling and may vary in volume, often intensifying as breathing becomes more irregular. Though unsettling for those nearby, it does not indicate pain for the patient.
Shallow or irregular breathing sometimes happens for a couple of days but sometimes only lasts for hours or minutes before breathing finally stops.
End of life breathing may involve breathing that becomes slow, quick, shallow, irregular, or even noisy. Each of these patterns has a specific meaning and place in the dying process. For loved ones, seeing or hearing these changes can be distressing.
Noisy breathing is a common symptom at end of life and is known informally as “death rattle.” Some clinicians also refer to it as terminal secretions, although the condition is generally caused by the inability to clear secretions, rather than any increase in their volume.
Agonal Breathing
Agonal gasping at the end of life is not a “desire or hunger for air” but rather a basic reflex of the dying brain.
Hospice Isn't About Giving Up
It's not a place to speed up the process of dying. A doctor suggesting hospice does not mean they're giving up on providing care and medical treatment. It's end-of-life care, but this doesn't mean giving up hope. It means shifting focus from curative treatments to comfort and support.
But the body tries valiantly. The first organ system to “close down” is the digestive system.
Agonal breathing is characterized by shallow half-breaths and an absence of chest movements. It can sound like snoring. Agonal breathing is a reflex that occurs when the brain is not getting enough oxygen. This is most commonly a result of cardiac arrest or cerebral ischemia (stroke).
Agonal breathing looks different than the dramatic gasping you might see in medical emergencies. In hospice care, this breathing pattern shows up as irregular, shallow breaths that come and go unpredictably. You might notice long pauses between breaths, sometimes lasting 15-30 seconds or more.
Ataxic breathing shows irregular variability of breathing effort and timing, whilst cluster breathing is defined as “regular cycles of deep breaths with variable periodicity”. Respiration alternans consists of "small breaths. interposed between full breaths"(Fisher, 1969, Wijdicks, 2007).
Dying Gasp is a final notification, or a signal sent by a device when it is about to lose power. The device sends a signal to alert a peer device, which identifies and responds to the power related issues. The occurrence of an unrecoverable condition like Power Failure triggers Dying Gasp.
Some Point System configurations support a “Last Gasp” feature which transmits a SNMP Trap when the cabinet loses power for any reason.
A "last gasp" is the moment just before someone dies — it can also mean the point of completing or ending something: "It was the last gasp of video stores in my city when that one closed." Definitions of gasp. noun. a short labored intake of breath with the mouth open.
As people get closer to dying, they may sleep more, become drowsy or be difficult to wake. They may fall asleep while talking. A person may slowly lose consciousness in the days or hours before death. When visiting someone with advanced cancer, be aware that visiting may be tiring and difficult for the dying person.
Some proponents of the trifunctional hypothesis distinguish two types of threefold deaths in Indo-European myth and ritual. In the first type of threefold death, one person dies simultaneously in three ways. He dies by hanging (or strangulation or falling from a tree), wounding, and by drowning (or poison or burning).
What other signs might there be that death is near? One is 'terminal agitation' or restlessness. This often appears as a need to get out of bed, agitated behaviour or commonly plucking of the sheets or 'knitting' of the hands. They might reach out as if towards something or somebody.