Diving Emergencies

“All diving represents a hazard, as humans were not designed to live under water. The deeper divers go and the longer they dive for, the greater the potential risks”

Although the bends or decompression sickness, arterial gas embolisims and other diving related emergencies arent the most common presentation to emergency care clinicians. We thought it would be good to revise this medical presenation.
In partnership with our colleagues at HM Coastguard we've developed this CPD podcast. We talked to a Deepwater technical dive instructor from purpleturtle diving, about the types of training available for divers and the types of diving they engage in, from hobbiest diving to deep water technical dives. Toni also tells us a bit about the gas mix that divers use including compressed air, nitrox and trimix gases.

We then speak to a dive doctor from DDRC healthcare, a dive research centre and not for profit organisation who run the national diver help line as well as a network of hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
We discuss how gas laws affect on gassing and off gassing with divers and how these develop into diving emergencies. We then go on to talk about the physiology, assessment and recognition of these conditions, as well as the pre-hospital and onwards treatment of them.

With thanks to Toni from www.purpleturtlediving.com/
and Felix from www.ddrc.org/