The bends and as I get older........

[willneverstop]

I have been diving for ten years now. In my fifth year of diving I got severly bent, twice, a month apart and never recieved medical treatment.

The second time, I lost feeling in three toes for eleven days. If you have never been bent before and most divers have not, the pain you go through from head to toe is intense and almost like prolonged electrocution. The pain was most intense around my groin area.

Having shared this and read several articles on micro bubbles and spinal scarring, what can i look forward to as I get older? Im 37 now and will never give up diving as it's my greatest passion in life.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated...

 

[scubadoc]

Sorry to hear of your two bouts with DCS (both untreated). I hope this was not by your choice, but due to uncontrolled circumstances.

Early treatment with oxygen and recompression is the only effective way to prevent the long-term effects of damage done to the neural tissue when it is involved with bubbles. The damage is done through many mechanisms, both form blockage of blood vessels and the severe reaction that the body institutes as it treats the bubbles as it would a foreign body.

There is quite a debate going on at this time about the brain damage that is caused by bubbling either associated with a decompression accident or, in some cases, simply scuba diving.

There are other long-term effects of diving which cause changes in the ears, bones, lungs and other parts of the body. If you are interested in reading further about this subject, check my article here ... and This link is basically a reprint of my article in Medscape (Requires registration).

 

[John Reinertson]

As scubadoc has noted, there is a degree of uncertainty in the studies.
The experts I have listened to have suggested that someone who had a DCS event while diving within the tables, might wish to consider getting a Patent Foramen Ovale study.
If there were deviations from the tables or high-risk diving, it's not as clear.

There is reasonable evidence that the more aggressive the diving profile, the greater the incidence of DCS.

Certainly for someone with neurologic residual (numb toes) the body's ability to recover from another neurologic insult is reduced. (This comes mostly from clinical data on other neurologic illnesses, but is consistent. )
Basically, there is a dead area in your nervous system. Your body has recruited alternate pathways to allow continued function. Repeated dead spots in the same general area will allow less and less recovery with each "hit"

Most of the people that taught me would strongly suggest more conservative diving, and many would suggest a bubble study, but it's difficult to give a good answer without knowing more of the circumstances of your "hits"
If you're willing to share more data, Dr Deco and Scubadoc (and some amateurs like myself) might be able be more specific.

Dive SAFE and bubble-free,
John Reinertson

 

[Dr Deco]

The suggestion of a saline echocontrast study is certainly advisable. More current concepts suggest that the test is better is performed with an esophageal probe (difficult) or with transcranial Doppler flowmeters (very simple). The later, furthermore, gives hemodynamically significant data and can diagnose this as the “shunt volume.”

These tests are new and may not be available in all areas of the world – or even North America.

In addition, there is the ability to assess (in my opinion) the ability of an individual to form decompression gas bubbles. This has been discussed at NASA but his not currently in favor because of operational constraints. The test is not done anywhere because it is only in the research stage.

Regrettably, everything that Dr Deco can tell you is not always available to everyone in our imperfect world. (This is why NASA has all of these capabilities in-house.)