The ability to check a diver for dcs at the scene would be brilliant, two friends of mine have suffered life changing injuries because late getting treatment. Is there a research group that would be willing to work with you.
Doubt it very seriously, you have seen here what the establisment thinks about checking for bubbles in your neck, or a layman self diagnosing if he is going to get DCS. Their methods are certainly better, but aren't available right after coming out of the water. I would love to have good cardiologist standing right there on the 6Pack with a 2D Huntleigh or 3D dopper instrument, but it ain't gonna happen and I can't afford it either.
If In doubt, call DAN since by asking you a few questions they are in a much better condition to diagnose why you can no longer walk and are having trouble breathing, than you could. (Why do the medicos always assume that only they are right and that the patient is an idiot?)
The funny thing is, my experience has been that almost every diver has bubbles in the jugular after surfacing from a TMX deco dive and whats important is how many bubbles.
Personally, I have found that as long as you can easily count the bubbles, you are probably OK and if there are enough bubbles that you can no longer count them, you'll probably need help soon. When you call the emergency in, remember to use small words for small minds and don't let your sentences be interrupted by the person on the other end of the line, who will try to organize a helicopter to the nearest hospital. Whoever you're calling for will not be helped by a hospital that doesn't have a working treatment chamber and a chamber that needs 4 hours to become operational is worse than useless.
The occasional mild pain in a shoulder or hip usually goes away by itself in a day or 2 - faster with a few hours of surface O2. The guy who taught me that trick 20 years ago was named BIll and had a 440cuft O2 tank in the bed of his pickup connected with a hose to the FFM located next to the drivers seat in order to breath O2 on his way home and another O2 tank in the livingroom of his singlewide 10 miles from Ginnie so he could watch TV while slowly losing his pain. His theory was that the more often you get bent the easier it was for your body to get bent, and he was diving every day the caves weren't washed out.
Get the cheap Korean Doppler that I mentioned and try it out on yourself and your buddies for a while before you start diagnosing, when you finally hear way more bubbles than you are used to hearing you'll know somthing is very wrong. Lots of familys buy them in order to listen to the fetal heartbeat, 4 months later they no longer need it and are being kept awake by the cries of a hungry baby at all hours of the day and night. That is when you can buy it, slightly used, in Ebay for a little bit more than half price (No! the Doppler, not the Baby!)
Michael
So, now I have upset everybody from the DCS experts to the divers that think they know something too.