While diving is generally a safe activity when the proper precautions are taken, it nonetheless carries with it a unique set of potential health hazards which can lead to significant morbidity and even fatality in extreme instances. Decompression Sickness Infamously referred to as 'the bends', this not uncommon condition is perhaps the best known of the so-called diving illnesses, though it is far from well understood. It derives its popular eponym from the fact that a common manifestation is joint pain, which may be excruciating. The basic pathology is thought to be due to the presence of nitrogen microbubbles in the blood and tissues of divers who have ascended too quickly for their bodies to dispose of the dissolved inert gas load. Although mild forms of this disease present only as joint aches or nonspecific skin rashes, more severe forms of the disease may result in significant neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory and other systemic derangement.
Symptoms range from numbness, paralysis and breathlessness to heart failure and coma.
Long-term sequela6 involving the nervous and skeletal systems have been reported in cases of decompression illness that have been inadequately managed. Paralysis and other sensory deficits may persist, and neuropyschological dysfunction, leading to cognitive and possibly even emotional disturbances, may last for months, resulting in functional incapacitation of the victim for prolonged periods. This is all the more tragic when one considers that many of these patients are young men and women in the prime of their lives. The human body has many gas-filled cavities, and changes in the surrounding pressure as the diver ascends or descends result in corresponding changes in these gas volumes. This can potentially lead to considerable tissue damage if the magnitude of these changes are drastic enough, and this phenomenon is known as barotrauma.