I posted this in the diving medicine forum, but thought I may get a broader cross reference of readers/responders by posting over in this forum.
Brief recap:
I recently suffered an accident in which I crashed my bicycle. Besides breaking my collar bone and tearing my AC joint, I also broke 5 ribs, one of which punctured my lung and collapsed it to 80%.
I'm 8 weeks past the initial injury and my lung has regained full volume to 100% and my body absorbed the 20%.
I have been in contact with DAN and briefly discussed this with them. They provided me with the following medical diagnosis taken from Diving Medicine by Alfred Bove (with notes added by me). In it he states the following regarding my injury:
Traumatic pneumothoraces caused by isolated injury to the chest wall should not pose any risk to the diver (so far so good, right?); however (uh-oh, I hate howevers in medical journals), most traumatic pneumothoraces are associated with underlying lung injury as well (mine was obviously the 5 broken ribs). If the injury was severe enough to lead to radiographic changes (mine was broken ribs and partially collapsed lung), it could have led to areas of air trapping (it did, about 20%, which has been slowly absorbed by the body and my lung is once again theoretically inflated to 100%). As a result, many authorities think that such persons should be advised not to dive (oh ****), although extensive diagnostic and hyperbaric chamber testing might define those at greatest risk.
Lets cut to the chase. It basically says the following: You should be able to dive again, but many authorities say you shouldnt.
Hrmmm, OK . OK? Talk about sitting on the fence with a medical diagnosis, eh?
My understanding is that at the 6 month mark I should submit myself to a spiral CT scan which will yield a much more detailed image of the injury than a traditional CT scan does. I'm told that not all lung injuries or lacerations heal, so this is of major concern to make sure mine actually healed. Next concern would be the amount of scar tissue from the healed laceration. Finally, if the spiral CT scan looks good, I should submit myself to a series of hyperbaric chamber rides to see how my lung reacts to the pressure.
So, I guess my question is, has anybody been through this before and can offer me some heads up on whats to come? Maybe offer me a ray of hope that my diving life has not prematurely ended. Or perhaps offer more insight or a different view point on the medical diagnosis of things?
TIA
Brief recap:
I recently suffered an accident in which I crashed my bicycle. Besides breaking my collar bone and tearing my AC joint, I also broke 5 ribs, one of which punctured my lung and collapsed it to 80%.
I'm 8 weeks past the initial injury and my lung has regained full volume to 100% and my body absorbed the 20%.
I have been in contact with DAN and briefly discussed this with them. They provided me with the following medical diagnosis taken from Diving Medicine by Alfred Bove (with notes added by me). In it he states the following regarding my injury:
Traumatic pneumothoraces caused by isolated injury to the chest wall should not pose any risk to the diver (so far so good, right?); however (uh-oh, I hate howevers in medical journals), most traumatic pneumothoraces are associated with underlying lung injury as well (mine was obviously the 5 broken ribs). If the injury was severe enough to lead to radiographic changes (mine was broken ribs and partially collapsed lung), it could have led to areas of air trapping (it did, about 20%, which has been slowly absorbed by the body and my lung is once again theoretically inflated to 100%). As a result, many authorities think that such persons should be advised not to dive (oh ****), although extensive diagnostic and hyperbaric chamber testing might define those at greatest risk.
Lets cut to the chase. It basically says the following: You should be able to dive again, but many authorities say you shouldnt.
Hrmmm, OK . OK? Talk about sitting on the fence with a medical diagnosis, eh?
My understanding is that at the 6 month mark I should submit myself to a spiral CT scan which will yield a much more detailed image of the injury than a traditional CT scan does. I'm told that not all lung injuries or lacerations heal, so this is of major concern to make sure mine actually healed. Next concern would be the amount of scar tissue from the healed laceration. Finally, if the spiral CT scan looks good, I should submit myself to a series of hyperbaric chamber rides to see how my lung reacts to the pressure.
So, I guess my question is, has anybody been through this before and can offer me some heads up on whats to come? Maybe offer me a ray of hope that my diving life has not prematurely ended. Or perhaps offer more insight or a different view point on the medical diagnosis of things?
TIA
