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SurfLung
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Decompression Chamber Use

Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:42 pm

Decompression Chamber Use...

I was watching the Silent World movie recently and there's a scene where one of the crew came up too fast after catching lobsters. Falco saw him behaving goofy due to Nitrogen Narcosis and signaled him to swim to the surface. He didn't stop to decompress and started showing symptoms of the bends. In the film, they broke out a small, one man, decompression chamber... Laid it on the deck in the bright sun. The diver slid inside and they pressurized him, then gradually brought him back to sea level pressure. In the film, everyone is casual and even kidding around as they leave him out there in the sun and go inside to eat their lobsters. If it was me, I'd have had a lot of trouble with claustrophobia not to mention baking in the sun. I figure this was a staged scene for the film. But still, they seem pretty casual about having to treat a diver for the bends.

Contrast that movie with the disaster scene of Shadow Divers when the father and son show up on the surface out of air, no deco, and already dying. They call the coast guard, administer aspirin and oxygen, CPR, etc. But they have no decompression chamber. Why not? Especially when all of the dives were about 230 feet deep and every dive required stage decompression. Why wouldn't they bring a portable decompression chamber? In the reading I have done on wreck divers and cave divers, it seems like they all get the bends sooner or later.

I then I remember a Sea Hunt episode where they had to decompress and used the escape chamber in a submarine to pressurize Mike and another guy. And another episode where they used a pressure suit to decompress. And another time just went back down in the water to decompress.

I looked up "Portable Decompression Chamber" and only found low pressure "Oxygen Therapy" units or "hyperbaric Stretcher" units. It seems to me that a serious portable decompression chamber for divers wouldn't be all that expensive... Why aren't they used?
SurfLung
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Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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rhwestfall
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Wed Jan 03, 2018 8:00 pm

Is Shadow Divers the Rouses (Chris & Chrisey) and the U-Who Submarine dives? The final chapter(s) describe that there isn't a portable (non-military operation or large scale commercial operation) and very few permanent chambers capable of addressing treatment for the depths and resulting schedules necessary.

Don't know if that answers your question...
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crimediver
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:21 pm

I watched a documentary about 12 years ago on mountain climbing and saw them treat a victim of altitude sickness with a fabric recompression chamber that as pressurized with a foot pump. It made me start wondering why the same cheap chamber could not be used on a dive boat.

I later posed that question to a DAN physician from Duke University that spoke at a public safety diving seminar I attended. Best as I recall they did not recommend it for the bends. Some of it had to do with an attendant not being able to minister to the patient. If there were airway problems and so on it might cause more harm if they had to open up the chamber to suction the patient, etc.

Overall I got the impression they did not think it was worth while. I was bit surprised by that and I don't see the harm in trying if someone had such a chamber ready. If I was bent I would go for a ride in a portable chamber if one was available.

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captain
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Thu Jan 04, 2018 10:05 am

I believe at one time in 50's or 60's USD had one in their catalog.
I do remember them being for sale. Scuba was still fairly new and hyperbaric medicine had not become as wide spread as it is now. I was mostly Navy and commercial diving companies that had chambers. In new Orleans Taylor Diving and Salvage had one but no hospitals did.
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SurfLung
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Thu Jan 04, 2018 10:56 am

Up until recently, I was lead to believe that the "modern" best course of action for a decompression accident is to administer oxygen and transport the patient to the nearest hospital with a decompression chamber. But the content of discussions on the internet indicates that this is not the only opinion.

1. One guy posted that a decompression chamber is "... not that hard to drive." And that getting the patient back under pressure immediately avoids complications. He said that in most cases his diver will have completed treatment and come out fine by the time emergency personnel arrives.

2. The pressure necessary is not all that high. One EMT-type reported that they had positioned the SOS Hyperlite chambers in remote areas and were able to successfully treat several patients with diving accidents. I saw references to the Hyperlite chamber being good for up to 2-3 atmospheres. And another reference saying 3 atmospheres would be enough for nearly all incidents.

3. With reference to Chris Rous of Shadow Divers, they were diving so deep (230ft) that the recommended chamber treatment was more atmospheres than the chamber was designed for. But the hospital still performed a treatment as deep as they could go. And an argument could be made that if they'd got Chris into a portable hyperlite chamber immediately, he might have lasted long enough to transport him to a more capable chamber.

4. But here is where the negatives come in. Chris Rous was in a state of massive decompression with all manner of complications stacking up and needing an attendant to administer IVs, CPR, and who knows what else. Put him in the Hyperlite all by himself and he might choke to death or something else before you could bring the pressure back down slow enough to have access to him.

5. LIABILITY... This bit of ugliness taints the judgment of what is the best course of action to take. Is it better to try to save someone and fail or not to try and avoid liability? Both paths lead to an injured or dead patient. When is the risk low enough to justify immediate on-site deco treatment?
SurfLung
The Freedom and Simplicity of Vintage Equipment and
Vintage Diving Technique are Why I Got Back Into Diving.

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Ron
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Thu Jan 04, 2018 4:18 pm

SurfLung wrote:
Wed Jan 03, 2018 5:42 pm
Decompression Chamber Use...

I was watching the Silent World movie recently and there's a scene where one of the crew came up too fast after catching lobsters. Falco saw him behaving goofy due to Nitrogen Narcosis and signaled him to swim to the surface. He didn't stop to decompress and started showing symptoms of the bends. In the film, they broke out a small, one man, decompression chamber... Laid it on the deck in the bright sun. The diver slid inside and they pressurized him, then gradually brought him back to sea level pressure. In the film, everyone is casual and even kidding around as they leave him out there in the sun and go inside to eat their lobsters. If it was me, I'd have had a lot of trouble with claustrophobia not to mention baking in the sun. I figure this was a staged scene for the film. But still, they seem pretty casual about having to treat a diver for the bends.

Contrast that movie with the disaster scene of Shadow Divers when the father and son show up on the surface out of air, no deco, and already dying. They call the coast guard, administer aspirin and oxygen, CPR, etc. But they have no decompression chamber. Why not? Especially when all of the dives were about 230 feet deep and every dive required stage decompression. Why wouldn't they bring a portable decompression chamber? In the reading I have done on wreck divers and cave divers, it seems like they all get the bends sooner or later.

I then I remember a Sea Hunt episode where they had to decompress and used the escape chamber in a submarine to pressurize Mike and another guy. And another episode where they used a pressure suit to decompress. And another time just went back down in the water to decompress.

I looked up "Portable Decompression Chamber" and only found low pressure "Oxygen Therapy" units or "hyperbaric Stretcher" units. It seems to me that a serious portable decompression chamber for divers wouldn't be all that expensive... Why aren't they used?
When I went to DAN's DMT course and learned to assist divers with recompression therapy, the two common answers I heard about this were:

1.) Portable chambers are incredibly expensive.
2.) They don't go as deep in terms of pressure as a larger, fixed site chamber.

In the Rouse's case, Chrissy died because despite that chamber going to a theoretical depth (as I recall, don't quote me on this) of 165 feet, Chrissy missed over 2 hours of deco. When he died, his heart was full of foam. The depth that he would have had to be taken to in order for the nitrogen to be forced back into solution would have been much deeper than 165 feet, which the chamber he went to couldn't even do.

The short answer is that if you miss sooper dooper amounts of deco, you will probably die. I'm not trying to Monday morning quarterback the Rouses either. I think dying doing what you love is one of the highest honors a man can have. It certainly beats getting fat and dying of heart disease, which statistically will be most men.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. -JYC

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ScubaLawyer
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Thu Jan 04, 2018 6:25 pm

During one of our deep deco dives in Truk back in the late 1970's three of us (for a variety of really stupid, don't wanna talk about it ever, poor planning idiotic mistakes) ran short of air with about 10 minutes of deco to go. We came to the surface, yelled our problem to the guys on the boat, and were handed the three full tanks that should have been already hanging on the deco line but were not. We dropped back down and followed the in-water omitted decompression schedule one of my buddies (a doctor) had committed to memory. Somehow we survived with zero symptoms. Bottom line, I can see the benefit of a portable on-deck chamber if a fixed-base operation is not readily accessible. Got to imagine the cost would be prohibitive for your average dive operator.
"The diver who collects specimens of underwater life has fun and becomes a keen underwater observer. .. seek slow-moving or attached organisms such as corals, starfish, or shelled creatures." (Golden Guide to Scuba Diving, 1968) :D

crimediver
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Fri Jan 05, 2018 12:31 am

I used to be a guy that obtained military surplus for my law enforcement agency that was called DRMO. I would screen for gear that our officers could used and it was provided to us for free. As we had a dive team I got a lot of equipment such as wet and dry suits, hot water suits, hand held sonars, underwater comms, Zodiacs and Rib boats and a little bit of everything. A couple of times I came across recompression chambers called fly away chambers. They were self contained chambers that could be delivered to where ever you needed them. All the ones I had ever seen were completely de-milled by having the port holes smashed, gauges broken and they had huge cylinders, I am guessing a 1000 cubic feet or more that had holes drilled in them . Obviously they had been destroyed to preclude them from ever being used again. I thought it was a shame that they were not given to the dive community in areas that could use them to treat folks. Seems like typical government waste in action.

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SurfLung
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:09 pm

A Simple Precaution...
- I think what we should do at Fortune Pond is hang a reserve air tank down the slope where we exit our dives. That way if anyone feels they pushed the no deco limits a little too close for comfort, they can just do an additional 10-15 minutes safety stop at 15 ft deep.
- I got the idea from looking at the NAUI No-DECO Dive Tables. The NAUI tables extend beyond the no deco limits and give a decompression stop just in case you over stayed your no deco time. Basic Scuba says the best treatment for the bends is not to get them in the first place.
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SurfLung
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swimjim
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:14 am

You could hang one off the end of the dock. That's a good solid anchor point and it's a good landmark.

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Ron
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Re: Decompression Chamber Use

Sun Jan 21, 2018 7:13 pm

For bonus nachos run the deco schedule for air but use Oxygen as long as your last stop depth is less than 20 feet. That will really wash you out. You feel like a million bucks on the way home. Sometimes, when we dive Lake Crescent here, I have like 1,000 PSI left in my double 100s and after my 20 foot stop I do like a 30 minute dive on nitrox at 15-20 feet. You feel wonderful on the way home. It's like an extra 30 minute deco stop.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. -JYC

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