Why decompression diving

Look at your dive manual to find out how long you need to wait before you fly. You need to wait at least 18 hours or more if you made several dives a day or you dove for several days. Author: Healthwise Staff. Medical Review: E. This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated, disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information.

Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use. Learn how we develop our content. To learn more about Healthwise, visit Healthwise. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. Updated visitor guidelines. Top of the page. Pressure Injuries From Scuba Diving. Topic Overview What are pressure injuries from scuba diving? Scuba injuries may be mild. But in some cases, they can cause serious problems or even death.

There are three kinds of injuries from pressure changes when diving: Barotrauma: Tissues near the air-filled spaces of your body—such as your ears, sinuses, dental roots, and lungs—can be damaged if your body can't equalize the pressure between it and the surrounding water.

This kind of injury is called barotrauma. As you descend, water pressure increases, and the volume of air in your body decreases. This can cause problems such as sinus pain or a ruptured eardrum. An important point is that you need not one, but two compatible dive computers for this type of diving.

While dive computers are highly reliable, you would not want to be stuck without your decompression info if there were a malfunction, so standard practice is to dive with two, staying within the limits of the most conservative even identical computers will vary slightly throughout a dive. What should I do if I miss the stop? Assuming this happens by accident on a no stop recreational dive, ascend to 15 feet or deeper if specified by your computer and stay there until it "clears," meaning you have stayed the required stop time.

Most computers show you the time as it counts down. For a recreational "oops" situation, the time would typically be short with only one stop required. However, you may be low on gas, so do not run out of gas underwater. Stay as long as you can, but if you don't have enough air to do the stop or you miss it altogether , surface with enough air to ascend at a proper rate and exit the water.

Then stay calm, alert the divemaster and your buddy, breathe oxygen if available and monitor yourself for DCS signs and symptoms. Do not dive for at least 24 hours or as specified by your computer. How can I learn decompression diving?

These courses begin the transition from recreational diving to technical diving, which includes planning and making tec dives. After completing these, you continue into the Tec 45 , Tec 50 , and Tec 65 courses, in which train you to make deeper, multi-stop decompression dives.

Skip to main content. Follow us email facebook twitter instagram pinterest youTube rss. Written informed consent was obtained from all the participants. DC: Contributions to the conception and design of the work, performed laboratory studies, contributions to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; wrote the submitted manuscript. MP: Contributions to the conception and design of the work, performed laboratory studies, contributions to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.

CB: Contributions to the conception and design of the work, Oversaw the research program, reviewed the manuscript. AM: contributions to the conception and design of the work, Oversaw the research program, reviewed the manuscript. This study is part of the Phypode Project grant no. This document reflects only the authors view. The Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The authors would like to thank the divers for their fundamental contribution participating in this study by uploading their dives in the DB and Dr. Baker, E. Google Scholar. Balestra, C. The lymphatic pathway for microbubbles. Diving Hyperb. PubMed Abstract Google Scholar. Intrathoracic pressure changes after Valsalva strain and other maneuvers: implications for divers with patent foramen ovale.

Undersea Hyperb. Pre-dive whole-body vibration better reduces decompression-induced vascular gas emboli than oxygenation or a combination of both. Bennett, P. The Physiology and Medicine of Diving, 3rd Edn.

A, Canada by Best Pub. Buhlmann, A. Cialoni, D. Genetic predisposition to breath-hold diving-induced hemoptysis: preliminary study. Detection of venous gas emboli after repetitive breath-hold dives: case report.

Deurenberg, P. Sex and age specific prediction formulas for estimating body composition from bioelectrical impedance: a cross-validation study. Body mass index as a measure of body fatness: age- and sex-specific prediction formulas. Eftedal, O. The relationship between venous gas bubbles and adverse effects of decompression after air dives.

Gempp, E. Preventive effect of pre-dive hydration on bubble formation in divers. Sports Med. Hugon, J. The pathway to drive decompression microbubbles from the tissues to the blood and the lymphatic system as a part of this transfer. James, W. London: H. When planning a dive that involves going into deco, it is very important that decompression stops are calculated, to ensure a safe enjoyable dive. As mentioned, going into deco usually involves either deep dives, long dives or both.

These types of dives fall into the category of technical or tec dives. Diving software has been developed to assist in calculating and planning deco stops. This is something that would be explained in great detail once any technical diver training is undertaken.

During a recreational dive we would not need to calculate a deco stop as we would plan to stay within our NDLs. However, if a no-decompression limit is accidentally exceeded, then an emergency decompression stop would be required. Below is a table showing the recommended deco stop times based on the recreational dive planner. These numbers may vary if using a dive computer. Compression and Decompression is all based upon absorbing and releasing gases such as nitrogen with increased or decreased pressure changes caused due to changes in depth.

The more depth you go to the quicker you absorb gases, so the method to release these gases is to ascend to a shallower depth.

You can see from the following table that the deeper we are the less NDL we have, This is because the deeper we are the more pressure we are under, and therefore absorb nitrogen quicker. These numbers are taken from the recreational dive planner. To decompress, we need to reduce the amount of pressure that is acting on our bodies. This is done by ascending to a shallower depth on the dive, then staying at this depth until enough nitrogen has been released before making your way to the surface or next depth to complete further deco stops.

The extra pressure is forcing nitrogen bubbles into the blood system once we have inhaled them through our lungs. You can compare this in terms of how fizzy drinks are made; the syrup of the drink is your blood and the carbonated bubbles are nitrogen.

These bubbles are then forced into the syrup with pressure where they stay until the pressure is changed by opening the drink. So what is happening in the body as we decompress or off-gas and slowly ascending, can be compared to opening a fizzy drink bottle very slowly. This allows the gas to leave slowly and controlled, and once enough gas has escaped it is then safe to take the lid off fully without spilling the drink.

This is similar to what is happening to our bodies while we decompress.