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| Title: | DOPPLER MONITORING FOR PREDICTING DECOMPRESSION ILLNESS AT ALTITUDE AFTER DIVING |
| Authors: | Johanson, DC
Chimiak, JM |
| Keywords: | decompression
altitude
air |
| Issue Date: | 1998 |
| Abstract: | BACKGROUND: Aircraft cabin altitude exposure has resulted in decompression sickness. Increasing the body's inert gas load by breathing compressed air prior to altitude exposrue increases that risk. Ultrasound doppler monitoring has been shown to be useful in defining that degree of risk. This study employed ultrasound doppler monitoring to study the decompression stress in a group of volunteer test subjects.METHOD: A group of 23 healthy male subjects were exposed to 1.6 ATA of pressure for ten minutes, given a twenty minute surface interval then exposed to 8000 feet of altitude for one hour. They were subjected to ultrasound doppler monitoring after the dive, every fifteen minutes while at altitude and at 15 and 30 minutes upon return to site level. The Spencer doppler scoring system was used for VGE identification. A diving medical officer blinded to the doppler scores evaluated each patient for signs of symptoms of decompression sickness. A score of 0-4 bubble score was obtained for all subjects at each interval studied with the ultrasound doppler. RESULTS: No episode of clinical decompression sickness was noted in any of the subjects as predicted by the doppler determination, nor were any bubbles heard at any time. CONCLUSION: The use of ultrasonic doppler monitoring is a useful tool in determination of the decompression stress during diving and/or altitude exposures. It is particularly useful in alerting observers to a particularly provocative profile without the need to proceed to a clinical decompression sickness endpoint. |
| Description: | Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, Inc. (http://www.uhms.org ) |
| URI: | http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/670 |
| Appears in Collections: | UHMS Meeting Abstracts
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