As the title says, I just got checked for a PFO. If you're not sure what that is then just briefly, its a hole in your heart that everybody has as a fetus which should seal up shortly after birth. An estimated one in four people's PFO does not seal up and those people may well have a perfectly normal life in complete ignorance to the condition. It can however create problems with diving as it can prevent a person from off gassing as nitrogen rich blood bypasses the lungs through the hole therefore removing the possibility for effective gas exchange. As the diver ascends having not removed sufficient nitrogen, they get a DCS hit.
Divers who have racked up thousands of dives have been known to be found with a PFO having never suffered DCS but I personally know a good few divers who got "undeserved hits" only to find out they had one. Adding helium to the mix apparently increases the risk of DCS as it is a thinner gas so able to slip through a hole easier.
Doug Ebersol offers some very good advice here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-W54Z9GjXw
Having heard PFO's pop up in conversation over the years and as my diving is getting deeper, longer and more technical I grew more interested in them. Mark Powell says that symptoms of a PFO can include a heart murmur and/or persistent migraines, both of which I had in my younger years. So then I started to get the fear and those 30 minute deco hangs would often be spent wandering about it to the point where I decided to get it checked.
Turns out I'm clear. At the hospital, they put a saline solution in an IV and watched my heart through an echo cardiogram. They showed me the bubble content from the saline on the right half of the heart and how as it beat, no bubbles worked their way through to the left.
Now I'm 500USD lighter but a lot happier in my mind. I can go back to spending my deco time watching the shallow reef as opposed to imagining bubbles getting shunted around my heart.
Divers who have racked up thousands of dives have been known to be found with a PFO having never suffered DCS but I personally know a good few divers who got "undeserved hits" only to find out they had one. Adding helium to the mix apparently increases the risk of DCS as it is a thinner gas so able to slip through a hole easier.
Doug Ebersol offers some very good advice here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-W54Z9GjXw
Having heard PFO's pop up in conversation over the years and as my diving is getting deeper, longer and more technical I grew more interested in them. Mark Powell says that symptoms of a PFO can include a heart murmur and/or persistent migraines, both of which I had in my younger years. So then I started to get the fear and those 30 minute deco hangs would often be spent wandering about it to the point where I decided to get it checked.
Turns out I'm clear. At the hospital, they put a saline solution in an IV and watched my heart through an echo cardiogram. They showed me the bubble content from the saline on the right half of the heart and how as it beat, no bubbles worked their way through to the left.
Now I'm 500USD lighter but a lot happier in my mind. I can go back to spending my deco time watching the shallow reef as opposed to imagining bubbles getting shunted around my heart.