Asthma & Diving

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Scuby Dooby

Guest
Messages
302
Reaction score
0
Location
Hong Kong
I've read up a bit on asthma and diving and it seems that some kinds of asthma are not necessarily a no no anymore. A question for people in the medical know -

My son is almost 11 and he very much wants his c card. I'm making him wait until 12 among other things so that he is more mature both physically and cognitively. He also has had asthma on and off since he was 9. Here is how he is affected:

When pollution starts picking up here in Hong Kong in the winter he will often start to have what seems to be a cold but is actually the start of his asthma. We start him on a steroid inhaler and he uses ventolin as needed to keep his lungs clear. This generally lasts for 1 - 2 weeks and then clears up. He then goes throughout most of the rest of the winter continuing the steroid but with no symptoms of asthma and no need for the ventolin. Sometimes it will flare up once or twice again through the winter but is easy to control with ventolin.

Outside of this season, the other 9 months of the year his lungs are clear and he uses no meds. Even during the months where he is using medication he never has asthma attacks from allergins, exercise, cold air etc. Just a slowly developing sort of a 'cold' that goes away in a couple of weeks.

Am I giving him false hope that at 12 he might be seen as medically fit to learn to dive?

Thanks for any experiences / help.

Joe
 
Dear Scuba Dooby:

I will wait for the medical doctors on the list to answer this one, since Dr Deco only answers questions concerning decompression physiology. You are correct that the Medical Forum is correct for this posting.

Dr Deco
:doctor:
 

Back
Top Bottom