What do lung expansion injuries feel like?

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I was wondering ... if one was to inhale lungs full of air at 100 feet and then shoot up straight towards the surface while holding all that air in, wouldnt the excess air force its way out of the nose and mouth before doing significant lung damage? What exactly do lung expansion injuries feel like?

 

[elan]

They cover this in rescue. The lung tissue is very delicate and if the airway is closed the air will find its way elsewhere. Going to the chest area for examle tearing the lungs

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

They cover this in rescue. The lung tissue is very delicate and if the airway is closed the air will find its way elsewhere. Going to the chest area for examle tearing the lungs

So does that result in immediate chest pain? Will you know right away that you have punctured lungs? Thanks.

 

[drrich2]

In Rescue, they teach you about arterial gas embolism, mediastinal emphysema and pneumothorax. All entail expanding air going places you don't want it.

 

[Hickdive]

Your lungs are insensitive to pain because there are no pain receptors there. Therefore you cannot feel any pain with an over expansion injury until the escaping gas reaches part of your body that does have pain receptors, by which time it is too late to prevent the damage. Your brain also doesn't have pain receptors so a cerebral arterial gas embolism will give you brain damage with no attendant pain.

It requires very little overpressure to damage your lungs, remember they have to be delicate enough to allow gas transfer across their membranes. On the other hand the muscles in your throat that control swallowing and holding your breath are much stronger. So in theory, yes eventually the expanding gas would force its way past those muscles and escape through your mouth and nose. Unfortunately your lungs would have been ripped to shreds long before that point.

 

[TSandM]

Symptoms of a ruptured lung (pneumothorax) can range from a sudden, sharp chest pain, to uncontrollable coughing, to a dull ache in the chest, to nothing at all except the patient noting reduced exercise tolerance and earlier shortness of breath. My one experience with a diving-related lung expansion problem was a patient with mediastinal emphysema, who complained of a dull ache in the center of his chest (not severe) and eventually sought attention because of the bubble-wrap phenomenon in the soft tissues of his neck. (Patient received no specific treatment and was fine within a couple of days.)

From what I have gleaned from obsessive reading of accident reports, people who experience AGE rarely complain of chest pain, but may complain of being unable to breathe before they lose consciousness. Certainly the one case I actually saw did.

 

[InTheDrink]

Out of curiosity, do lung over expansion injuries show up on x-rays? If so, what are the tell tale manifestations?

 

[TSandM]

Pneumothorax appears as a dark area in the chest with no lung vascular markings in it:

Pneumomediastinum looks like black lines around the heart, and this image also shows subcutaneous emphysema, or air in the soft tissues:

Arterial gas embolism will not show up on regular x-rays, but I understand you can sometimes see bubbles in the brain on CT.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

In Rescue, they teach you about arterial gas embolism, mediastinal emphysema and pneumothorax. All entail expanding air going places you don't want it.

I learned about all of this in my open water class to an extent. I cover it in graphic detail in my OW classes.

 

[InTheDrink]

Pneumothorax appears as a dark area in the chest with no lung vascular markings in it:

Pneumomediastinum looks like black lines around the heart, and this image also shows subcutaneous emphysema, or air in the soft tissues:

Arterial gas embolism will not show up on regular x-rays, but I understand you can sometimes see bubbles in the brain on CT.

Many thanks for that and the x-ray examples. X-ray reading seems like a dark art to me.

Do you think that AGE and IPE could get confused? I only ask because of the symptoms of not being able to breathe followed by unconsciousness.

Thx