Head pain while descending near the end of a dive?

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Solly

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Messages
514
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Location
Grenoble - France
# of dives
200 - 499
Hi, this occured to me yesterday on my last dive. The complete profile was a 2 days (2 dives in each day) trip. Shallow depths, max 14m in all the dives.

This was in my last dive, max depth was 12m and average depth 7.5m, I was hovering between 5-6m for about 15 minutes and we paused for a photo, at this time I ascent to almost 1.5m, then when I wanted to get back to around 4m I had sever pain in my head (am no doctor but it seemd to be the 2 sinus chambers near the top of the head) hence getting back to 2m for few minutes then trying to descend again (just to check myself) I still got this pain, so I continued the few meters to the boat at 2m depth where I was comfortable...
on the boat, most of the experienced divers told me it is just a small blockage that occured as I was shallow in the dive then the change in pressure from 4m to 1.5m and it should be ok next time I dive (10 days from now) .... I will be seeing an ENT physician today (I have no pain or any symptoms of any kind but I need ot check) but I thought to ask if anyone has experienced such problem before? would that be temporary or do you think I will miss my next trip?

Thanks
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

moved to diving medicine
 
Yes, this sounds very much like a sinus squeeze. I had this happen to me in the middle of a dive in Indonesia. We were down about 45 feet or so (working our way up from deeper) and I tried to go down to look at something, and it felt as though someone had stuck a knitting needle in my left eye. It hurt horribly! Ascending relieved the pain, and I didn't do any more descent during that dive.

I've never had the symptoms again -- even the next dive on the same day. So it was clearly just a very temporary problem, and I hope yours proves the same.
 

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