23/09/2019
Decompression Illness: What Is It and What Is The Treatment?
Decompression illness, or DCI, is a term used to describe illness that results from a reduction in the ambient pressure surrounding a body. A good example is what happens to your body when you're surfacing after a dive.
DCI encompasses two diseases, decompression sickness (DCS) and arterial gas embolism (AGE). DCS is thought to result from bubbles growing in tissue and causing local damage, while AGE results from bubbles entering marsadiving.com lung circulation, traveling through the arteries and causing tissue damage at a distance by blocking blood flow at the small vessel level.
Who Gets DCI?
Decompression illness affects scuba divers, aviators, astronauts and compressed-air workers. It occurs in approximately 1,000 U.S. scuba divers each year. Moreover, DCI hits randomly. The main risk factor for DCI is a reduction in ambient pressure, but there are otheru risk factors that will increase the chance of DCI occurring. These known risk factors are deep / long dives, cold water, hard exercise at depth, and rapid ascents.
Rapid ascents are closely linked to the risk of AGE. Other factors thought to increase the risk of DCI but for which evidence is not conclusive are obesity, dehydration, hard exercise immediately after surfacing, and pulmonary disease. In addition, there seem to be individual risk factors that have not yet been identified. This is why some divers seem to get DCI more frequently than others although they are following the same dive profile.
Since DCI is a random event, almost any dive profile can result in DCI, no matter how safe it seems. The reason is that the risk factors, both known and unknown, can influence the probability of DCI in myriad ways. Because of this, evaluation of a diver for possible decompression illness must be made on a case-by-case basis by evaluating the diver's signs and symptoms and not just based on the dive profile.
By Dr. E.D. Thalmann, DAN Assistant Medical Director
With reports by Renรฉe Duncan, editor, and Joel Dovenbarger, vice president, DAN Medical Services