That's a loaded question. If you post details of the incident(s), any dives leading up to it/them, and the physician's recommendations, maybe one of us can help you make sense of them.
Sorry about that, I'm still a little peeved by how she went about what she did and how her husband tried to pull the rank card. Anyway, a little over two months ago we had a long dive with mixed teams. It was around a 3 hour dive, our average depth 50ft with a maximum depth of 90ft. The dive was planned around 32% Nitrox but one other person and myself were diving CCR. Through many factors that SHOULD NOT have happened, one diver had three cylinders of air. We go through with our dive and at the completion of our safety stop, I glance over and notice 100 minutes of deco remaining! (But that's another discussion.)
I signal the other divers to surface and shot up an surface marker. I had him take all three of his cylinders down to pretty much nothing, had another diver go down and pretty much give him the rest of his gas, and so on with the next. When all the gas was given up, I switched to OC bailout and put him on my loop at 1.3ppO2. We were doing this at a depth of 20'. When the oxygen cylinder was done, we do a slow ascent to the surface and strip off all his equipment except wetsuit to keep his workload to a minimum. He started complaining of pain in his knees, lower back, headache, and nausea. We take him to the military medical facility and they transported him to a military hyperbaric chamber. The delay in recompression was about 2.5 hours; Treatment Table 6A was used to treat Type II DCS.
Post treatment evaluation of cognitive, motor, sensory, reflexes, vision, etc. was done and found to be okay. Same goes for the 24hr follow up. Dive physician ordered 30 days of dive and altitude restriction (not to exceed 1200 ASL), no physical exercise, no lifting objects in excess of 25lbs, no standing for extended duration, and hydrate often. Physician made referrals for EKG, Echo with bubble study, CT and MRI within the next week. She stated that while he was in the Army diving for only for fun, she would hold him to the same medical fitness requirements of a Navy working diver and that all follow up tests were standard protocol for the Navy.
After the bubble study, the dive physician calls and said the diver had a PFO and it is unlikely that he will be able to dive again another consult was requested for cardiology. 46 days after the incident, the cardiologist examined the echo and said there is no suggestion that there is a PFO and "even if there was a PFO it would be very small and no physician in his right mind would even try to close it up on a 19 year old. It's just too risky and outweighs the benefits." In the medical note, the cardiologist wrote that there is no medical contraindication to pursue diving recreationally and technically and that the decision to dive be limited to factors such as the inherent risk. There is no PFO found and no reason to recommend any PFO closure procedure.
The diver, that weekend, took that as a green light and went on a single shallow dive (35-40ft for 40mins). At the surface interval he bumps into the dive physician who, for lack of better military jargon, chews him out in public calling him a stupid idiot that's going to hurt himself and that she will add another note on Monday. What takes the cake if when her husband (who is in the Army) steps up and says he's disobeying a direct order from a commissioned officer. The diver calls his command and they tell him to get a copy of the medical notes on Monday so they can be reviewed and to have a conference call with the physician.
The new medical note recommends placing the diver on an indefinite dive restriction, but it does not go into any detail on why that determination was made. US Navy Diver manual - "Divers diagnosed with AGE or Type II DCS may be medically cleared to return to diving duty 30 days after initial diagnosis and treatment by a DMO, if initial hyperbaric treatment is successful and no neurologic deficits persist." While physicians may only make recommendations to service members, his command made the call and ordered him to never dive again so it would be in violation of military law to go back into the water.
We are baffled more than anything really. Is there something we missed medically or is she upset because another doctor backdoored her diagnosis? I thought she was a great dive physician; she lost my respect when she lost her cool in public and brought her husband into it (he is not a physician.)