‘He was brought back from the edge’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.

The famed comedian suffered a “life-threatening” heart failure that caused him being placed in an medically induced coma in 2021, as revealed in a new documentary project about the American actor and comedian.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of movies such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who hosted the Oscars twice, remained in care for five full weeks in the hospital.

“He wasn't right, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we go to the ER. His heart stopped. During those years he was drinking, he developed cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they can’t pump as much blood out with each beat.”

Medical professionals then put him into a state of unconsciousness for eight days, before warning his child, Caley: “His return is uncertain. We don’t know how aware he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“Upon waking, all he was able to do was use his vocal cords,” she added. “He has basically come back from the dead.”

He himself has said that he has dealt with memory problems since his hospitalisation, and in the film he does not recollect some of his past professional and personal disputes, including a fistfight with fellow comedian Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live green room.

The comedian noted he was “disappointed” by his absence from the 50th anniversary special of SNL recently, at which he was in attendance but not on stage.

“Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” he said. “I haven't spoken about this until now. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When co-stars Garrett and Laraine Newman were called up, I was curious as to why I didn’t. I wasn't invited. Why was I overlooked?”

Chase, 82, nearly lost his life in 1980 when he was subjected to an electrical shock on the set of Modern Problems, an accident which led to a period of clinical depression.