One dead, one injured - Pensacola Beach, Florida

[Brad_Horn]

Especially in rebreather diving where certain units can cause high WOB in certain conditions which is thought to lead to IPE.

Just having a skim through the rebreather fatality tracking there wouldn't appear a direct correlation to that? But certainly one with units of known higher WOB from 1.8J/L to 3.0+J/L. The units WOB being preset by design.... and the informed diver therefore knowing (and having been able to be taught) their worst case WOB before they even get wet.

Colour me skeptical. Considering the numbers, I expect RB divers are below the error margin threshold for any statistics, .

How many more do you need? DeepLife list 550 odd... Deep Life Design Team: databases and analysis of rebreather accident data

 

[dmaziuk]

How many more do you need?

How many's on offer?

 

[PfcAJ]

I can confirm.

Big facts.

 

[Brad_Horn]

How many's on offer?

Depends on whom you speak to...
Some would have you believe 14.8 per year Examining Early Technical Diving Deaths: The aquaCORPS Incident Reports (1992-1996)
DeepLife seem to be pretty constantly tracking 25-30 odd per year by individual name/media report. And I'd hazard a guess they are under reporting still

Is this fatality, also on a rebreather, like the last Pensacola based fatality One dead, one injured - Pensacola, Florida. Who knows...

 

[dmaziuk]

Depends on whom you speak to...

The point was, if you actually bother to look through the chain of references in the quoted article, the "1.1% incidence of IPE" comes from a study from some 1200 cases of IPE. But that article is behind a paywall for me so I can't see what the study was or how many of its subjects were RB divers. My guess is none.

It does not come from a study of 500 "who knows" RB fatalities.

750K Americans die of heart attack every year. Some very small number die from IPE. If a coroner gets a body with signs of "cardiac event" and fluid in the lungs, can you guess what the more likely cause of death is?

 

[Brad_Horn]

The point was, if you actually bother to look through the chain of references in the quoted article, the "1.1% incidence of IPE" comes from a study from some 1200 cases of IPE. But that article is behind a paywall for me so I can't see what the study was or how many of its subjects were RB divers. My guess is none.

I understand the desire for the unknown unknown. But how does one study the unknown?
Considering that a correlation between WOB and IPE has been drawn. And that the typical tested RB has a WOB of 180%-300% that of a good OC reg. And untested RBs are likely higher. One could probably hypothesis safely that 1.1% incidence of recorded IPE if extrapolated across for RB incidents is woefully low, but until rebreather fatalities are taken more seriously and each one fully investigated, we will never know.

It does not come from a study of 500 "who knows" RB fatalities.
750K Americans die of heart attack every year. Some very small number die from IPE. If a coroner gets a body with signs of "cardiac event" and fluid in the lungs, can you guess what the more likely cause of death is?

Based on the above tracking. I'd suggest drowning, due to the near default lack of retainer/gag strap allowing the unit to flood/sink and the diver drown once they have gone unconscious... But as rebreather accident investigations are rare, as in there have maybe been 10 published in detail out of that 550+, any further determination would be unlikely.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

Is this the same incident as the one in the article below?

We didn’t just “flatten” this curve, we crushed it

"In late June, a dive operator in the Gulf passed along details of a diver fatality off Pensacola Beach that did not make the news. What the news stories said was that one person died and another was injured after "coming up to fast." There is a lot more to this than just that.

The underlying story is that two individuals, after taking part in a one-afternoon scuba discovery experience, decided this was all the knowledge and skills they needed to attempt a 200ft dive off their own boat. What could possibly go wrong?

After the first victim bottomed out his take, both men raced to the surface. One made it but had to be airlifted to the chamber. The second vicim didn't make it, sinking to the bottom. A third victim jumped in and brought the body to the surface, getting bent for his trouble. By then it was too late for victim number two."

If so, then that's crazy! A powerful reminder to get training to dive and to not dive beyond your training. Of course the individuals in this article it seems took things to the extreme. Great article by the way! Generally talks about how we have crushed the curve of divers dieing over the years.

 

[Gene]

As I understand it, coroners don't report IPE in those cases because "fluid in lungs" of a drowning victim isn't exactly telling. I.e. the only cases of IPE where you're actually sure are the ones who make it to the emergency room.

I had an IPE incident in April 2019 while cave diving at a popular north Florida dive site. Apparently it all came about due to a virus I caught a few months earlier. The virus caused my heart's ejection fraction rate to drop to a very low 18 percent. (Which I had no knowledge of prior to the IPE incident.)
I'm fully recovered now and wrote a first person account for the upcoming Underwater Speleology magazine. I was cleared to return to diving in October 2019, but waited until January 2020 due to my work schedule.
At my last cardiologist appointment in May, my doctor said that it could have easily been a corona virus. Not covid-19 necessarily though due to the timing.
This is something I didn't even know I had until it was almost too late....

 

[DandyDon]

after taking part in a one-afternoon scuba discovery experience, decided this was all the knowledge and skills they needed to attempt a 200ft dive off their own boat. What could possibly go wrong?

Not even certified? How did anyone survive?

 

[StevenRN]

I had an IPE incident in April 2019 while cave diving at a popular north Florida dive site. Apparently it all came about due to a virus I caught a few months earlier. The virus caused my heart's ejection fraction rate to drop to a very low 18 percent. (Which I had no knowledge of prior to the IPE incident.)
I'm fully recovered now and wrote a first person account for the upcoming Underwater Speleology magazine. I was cleared to return to diving in October 2019, but waited until January 2020 due to my work schedule.
At my last cardiologist appointment in May, my doctor said that it could have easily been a corona virus. Not covid-19 necessarily though due to the timing.
This is something I didn't even know I had until it was almost too late....