Freedive Decompression Sickness

[lowwall]

@Dr Simon Mitchell

I only have a layperson's grasp of how high pressure O2 treats DCS, but isn't IWR particularly well suited for treatment of freedivers because problems are most likely to occur in "fast" tissues?

I am assuming that tissues that can accumulate enough N2 during brief periods of high PPN2 exposure to cause issues can also shed it relatively quickly.

Some of the big issues with IWR for scuba DCS victims (e.g., gas supply, hypothermia, getting enough monitoring divers) are ameliorated for apnea divers if the latter only need treatment for say 5-15 minutes at a time.

Maybe even better as a prophylactic on deep or repeated deep dives? Presumably they need to surface for it count as a completed apnea dive, but for record dives they could immediately head back to 5m and breathe 100% O2 for a few minutes. For deep training dives, they could perhaps stop on the ascent.

 

[CG43]

Maybe even better as a prophylactic on deep or repeated deep dives? Presumably they need to surface for it count as a completed apnea dive, but for record dives they could immediately head back to 5m and breathe 100% O2 for a few minutes. For deep training dives, they could perhaps stop on the ascent.

For a competition freedive to be considered successful, the diver must remove the mask or nose clip
within 30 seconds of surfacing, make the ok sign and say “I am ok”.
After the evaluation you will see some divers quickly descend with an O2 tank. This will almost always be a precautionary measure.

In the non limit category many divers let go of the sled (which pulls them up) on ascent at a depth of 10m to 15m and swim slowly up the last few meters to avoid DCS .

The topic of avoiding DCI (DCS + AGE) is now seriously discussed among freedivers.
Avoiding DCS in scuba diving is an old topic, but in freediving everything becomes even more variable because the physiological values of the diver have to change a lot to achieve the amazing performance.
But if the freediver suffers DCS I do not see why this and also the treatment should be very different from that of scubadivers.