In Water Recompression?

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L

Lopaka

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I am following a thread in the "Ask Dr. Decompression" forum about "In Water Re-compression", (IWR) as a alternative to the chamber if one is not available:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ask-dr-decompression/301373-alternative-chamber.html

This comment caught my eye:

"The Hawaii method is to dive back to at least 100 feet on air and then once back up to 30 feet, switch to 100% oxygen and the continue on 100% oxygen once back on the surface for a few hours. They're convinced it works and the professional divers of Hawaii use this. That's all I can say........."

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/4671413-post25.html

I find this a bit hard to believe. Anyone know if this does happen here among "professional divers" or others?
 
I'm skeptical. 100 feet down is a lousy place to lose consciousness.
 
100 ft doesnt make much sense seeing as how the pressure change is less the deeper you go. Seems like 20 or 30ft inwater on o2 would give you plenty of recompression with an ideal o2 window.

My Tech 1 instructor talked about how they did in water recompression for dive excursions out in the middle of no where. I think it was along the lines of find a shallow lagoon with a 20ft bottom and stick a guy on o2 with I think a check for symptoms every 30 mins. Cycle another 30 mins if symptoms are present or something like that. I have no plans of ever diving any where removed from a chamber. Why divers would risk doing in water recompression here is beyond me.
 
but only if you get back in the water within (IIRC) five minutes of surfacing. You would follow a protocol to retrace your deco stops.

Additionally, If you've taken a neurologic hit you're going to be incapacitated by definition. You'd need help, to say the least.

Third, 100% 02 at 30FSW, assuming a bounce to 33 ft, is a PP02 of 2.0 and dangerous as well. There are stories on this board about people toxing at 30 ft on 02, and I'm not saying I'd never do 2.0, but I'd darn sure not want to do it stressed out.

I'm thinking this: Anybody who's well enough prepared to have 100%02 hooked up with TWO pony bottles big enough to matter, a spare tank or doubles rig big enough to send two people back down to 100ft to start some sort of decompression, and the ability to even ballpark calculate the deco times probably isn't going to get that bent in the first place:D

Me? I'm laying down, staying warm, relaxing as best I can, and breathing 100% 02 on the surface, unless I'm NOT bent, blew a stop and have the equipment ready to head back down RIGHT AWAY and continue the deco procedures.

And if I wasn't advanced nitrox and deco-certified, and didn't have reasonable redundancy given the emergency nature of the scenario, I'd stay on the boat. If somebody asked ME to take them down, I'd probably say no.

It's a good theory, and I don't disagree with people who argue "why can't you do IWRC" but I can't imagine a scenario in which I would delay a ride to the chamber, no matter how long, just so I could try to make myself better.
Just my two cents, I'm not a doctor and I'm just barely a deco diver.
 
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they (the hawaiians their talking about) used to do this type of deco because their dive profiles was in excess of 180 fsw and doing up to 6 dives per day,,, i'm trying to find an old link that had the info,,, alot was from dan (divers alert network) about it, and it was the beginning of the 3 minute safety stop that was formulated on Kauai back in the late 80's, NAUI used to teach omitted decompression as part of the OW class but it was deleted back in early 90's along with buddy breathing.
if i find the link i'll post it
 
The ones likely to still be practicing it I think would be the black coral divers - might contact one of them.

FWIW I have one friend who treated himself with IWR about 4 years ago after diving air instead of nitrox by mistake. The reasons he gave were the lack of a chamber on Maui, requiring multiple hours and a plane flight to Oahu for treatment. This was not the first time He had treated himself. While it helped he then went to Oahu the next day for chamber treatment. He was rather limited in the depth he could attain for his recompression however (15-20 ft), and he attributed the poorer than usual results to that.

Aloha, Tim
 
I thought there was some really high tech chamber on Oahu that could take you to like 300 feet on trimix? I read an article online about that one somewhere. I can't remember exactly where it was but it was not a military facility.
 

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