persistant diving related sickness

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seacritter

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I am a commercial diver, my crew and I have been having unique post diving illness for the past 2 years. We have been racking our brains trying to come up with a common denominator to determine the cause of this illness. This, you might find, to be a new illness to research or, I might discover it is common. I have not found anyone at this point in time that has heard of what is occuring to us. If you are interested I would like to start a thread on this. Roy, Sea Critters
 
Hello Everyone,

Actually, Dr. Ernst Campbell, aka ScubaDoc, is now here at ScubaBoard. As Walter suggested, it might be useful if you posted a description of the circumstance surrounding the illness, i.e. does it occur after every dive, are the same factors present on every dive which results in the illness, etc., as well as some of the details of the illness itself such as vomiting, headache, shortness of breath, etc.

That way either Dr. Deco or ScubaDoc will have some idea of the background and circumstances you are coming from.

Cheers,
 
Rick,
Why on earth would you send him anywhere else, the best brains in the busisness are right here.

No need to shop around.

Don
 
Dr. Deco is a NASA scientist.
Scubadoc is an MD who is probably the best at Scuba related medical disorders. This thread needs to be moved from Dr. Deco to Diving Medicine - I don't see an easy way to do that. Is there?
Rick
 
Seacritter...... :bonk:

You piqued our interest. If it is a problem that is totally unique to your diving situation, it is probably some variation of a diving technique (e.g., decanting) or some environmental condition (e.g., paint fumes).

Please send in another letter to either this forum or to DIVING MEDICINE.


__________________________
[sp] Dr. Deco

 
This is what I was looking for. Someone interested,qualified and willing to help. I'll repost over on the diving medicine board....Thank you for your interest. Sea Critter
 
Here we go...A little history. We dive in the Gulf Of Mexico off the central west coast of Florida and the Florida Keys. We Aquaculture Live Rock. In other words we build small artifical reefs with upland rock and after 1-2 years we harvest the rock for marine aquariums. Have been diving 23 very active years. Depth ranges from 20 ft in the Keys to max. 50ft in the Gulf. Have done a few deep dives but, this condition has never occured after a deep dive. OK. About 3 years ago Marti, my partner, complained of "Flu type" symptoms after a day of diving. Fever, chills general body aches. Didn't think much about it. Shortly after she had a similar episode down in the Keys. She took 800mg ibuprofen and drank a beer. ~1 hour symptoms were gone. next episode 2 weeks later same set up and cure. She contacted DAN and I think when she included the beer as a treatment/cure her credibility was shot. She said the person she talked to did not seem interested. ~2.5 years ago I started to have the same problem. Not often but, enough to start investigating a cause. The problem occurs 1-2 hours after our dives. Dives in the Gulf are: 2 dives, 30-50 feet, 1-1.5 hours and we are diving nitrox avg.34%. Dives in the Keys are on air and this has occured in 12ft dives and 25ft dives. Like I said, It manifests as a sudden onset of "Flu type" symptoms. General body aches, Fever, Chills, and weakness. We treat with 800mg ibuprofen and the symptoms subside within an hour.(we skip the beer now). We have ruled out tank contamination( or bad air), Regulator contamination(have been cleaning with peroxide),Considered dehydration(Because on one episode my wife took supine and standing B/P and I was tilt positive). This is occuring more often in me and not as often in Marti. She feels it is our activity post diving. Loading coolers of rock in to trucks and lugging gear. My personal Doc wants to draw blood gases during next episode to calculate excess nitrogen. I think I got it covered. What do you think. I'm diving tommorrow, I'll let you know if it occurs. Sea Critter
 
seacritter,
I'm not the Doc, but I would bet it has to do with the extraneous post dive activity. Let's wait & see what the Doc has to say. They mentioned in earlier posts, back several weeks ago about post-diving activities.

Don
 
Hello Sea Crittur:

Several thoughts occur as I read your history of your 'illness'. First, this is probably 'salt water aspiration syndrome', a condition described by Edmonds in almost exactly the same words and phrases that you use. His group found that except for ENT barotrauma it was the most frequently reported illness in the Royal Australian divers. Edmonds, Diving and Subaquatic Medicine, 3rd Edition, 1993. http://www.scuba-doc.com/saltwasp.html. It can occur with overt aspiration but can also occur with micronized droplets of seawater from your regulator. It most often comes on an hour or two after diving and goes away by the next morning whether treated or not.

Other possibilities that can be ruled out by your history include pulmonary decompression sickness, pulmonary barotrauma, "Key West Diver's Syndrome" (infections from regulators and mouthpieces).

Now, it gets interesting! Consider that this might be the result of multiple shallow dives effectively lowering your complement blood levels causing this picture. One of the causes of post-diving fatigue is thought to be due to the 'using up' of most if not all of your C3a, and C5a,d fractions in your blood by venous gas emboli of multiple shallow dives. This has even been shown to be protective to decompression illness on subsequent deep dives! See http://www.scuba-doc.com/cmplmnt.html .

It would be wiser to have your complement levels checked than to attempt to draw 'nitrogen' levels, an impossible way to diagnose elevations of inert gas at sea level (due to the off-gassing and partial pressures of 1 atm). If the gas is present in bubble form, they would be inaccessible to the study.

BTW, a good cool beer after a dive is great but not when you also take Ibuprofen. This is a sure way to break down the mucous barrier of the gastric lining and getting either an ulcer or erosive gastritis.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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