Painful Peeling Hands and Feet After Diving

[Jack56]

Jack56, your pictures are exactly what I get after every dive trip. I was diving fine for a while, but I guess it has been 5-10 years now that after yearly trip, my finger tips get somewhat numb and feel puffy / calloused, and then the outer skin peels and underneath is cracked, wrinkled and very sensitive. Takes about a week for the condition to start and then lasts about two weeks.

My dermatologist wasn't sure. I'm not sure if it is Aquagenic Peeling, since that description seems to have the spots and plaques developing right after water contact. The paper on saturation diving is much closer, strange that there has been no more info since that article from the 1990s.

Hello! Isnt it strange!? It took a while for my fingers to heal since this post, about a month or so. I just got back from another trip and it is happening again. I think my limit is 5 days of diving. I was recently diving 8 days straight. My dermatologist prescribed drysol to be applied to my palms and feet every night for two weeks before the trip. Drysol is aluminum chloride and is meant to stop sweating by closing the pores. She was hoping my hands would not absorb the water after use, alas, It did not work. My hands became very tight, red, and swollen at the tips of my finger tips about 6 days in. They then split, peeled, and now they’re raw. I even wore gloves in the cave to prevent my pruned fingers from tearing on the line markers. When I removed my glove the skin was already peeling off on the last day of diving. I’m not sure what is going on.

 

[Jcp2]

UpToDate

It sounds like warm water immersion injury. Unfortunately the only way to prevent it is to limit time of water exposure. Shorter trips? Drysuit with dry gloves?

 

[JohnnyC]

Buy some sample tubes and take some water samples from wherever you're diving. Send them off to see if there's anything in the water that might be causing a reaction?

 

[Matinee]

Hello Duke, I saw a dermatologist at UPENN today. She suspects it is Aquagenic Peeling of the Palms. It is very rare, mostly seen in those with CF. Which I do not have, but they want to screen for it anyway. She recommended Aluminum Chloride cream to be applied two weeks before a dive trip. This should make my pores smaller, which will make my hands and feet hold on to less water. It is prescribed for those with sweaty palms and feet. I am hoping this will work. It is a complete bummer, there doesn’t seem to be a cure. This could explain why I had the issue as a child, I must have had his rare condition my whole life and since I’ve been in water so much lately it is reemerging. I was also taking Naproxen before my last two trips and she believes this could have exasperated the condition.

I will post again after my dive trip in February where I will be doing my full cave, I will be in the water for much longer then (yikes)

This is a super late reply but i wanted to thank you for solving my mystery! I do month-long intensive diving once a year, and last year was struck with exactly this. I never bothered to look into as it healed up when the trip was over, but this is certainly what it was. And I am a CF carrier!

 

[Goingforsound]

I had exactly this on my last dive trip (40 dives over 23 days) and a lot of sweating in indonesia.

Ive been diving since but not as much.

 

[michael-fisch]

Had something similar, on my last trip to Florida. After 1 or 2 weeks of spending 6hrs a day underwater, the skin on all wetted surfaces starts to seperate from the calluses, hands and feet peel like crazy and the new skin under the calluses is tender untill it hardens up with time. I don't think that the new skin will peel off as easily as the thick old skin did.

Michael

 

[Jcp2]

Thanks for the update. I’ll add that to my list of uncommon water related skin disorders.

 

[tcherna]

Another repeat incident after scuba diving in the Sea of Cortez for a week, but not so much after snorkeling with whales in the Dominican Republic (less water exposure). But a random question, I rinse my wetsuit gear in Mirazyme after each of my week trips, but I hadn't always done that. I wonder if that might leave a residue?

 

[scuba doc]

My husband and I both occasionally get this after extensive dive trips. I'm "atopic" (my skin is very reactive, and responds to most things more severely than the average person, but my husband has completely normal skin, and the same thing happens to him) . Seems to be related to the amount of time we dive and how wet our skin stays--if we only dive 2x a day, no problem, but at 5/day for a week, skin peeling seems to happen, more often than not. Being on a liveaboard doesn't help, as my feet are rarely dry. On the last few trips I tried rinsing my feet with fresh water after diving, dry them, and wear flip flops on deck and let my feet air dry (getting the sole of my foot off the flip flop) as much as possible, which has helped. There's little published about "diver's skin" but it's not that rare--I see posts on various dive sites about it and it makes sense divers would get a version of "trench foot" from extended water exposure. I've also tried using Neutrogena Norwegian Hand Cream at night when I'm on diving trips and I think it helped a little. The only article I found on it was : https://oem.bmj.com/content/oemed/5...Ps_Z8RGI5AtXyeOq8SVnkO47ZaRPIYIvgOVOOK6Rny0o4 .

We need some diving derm docs to get excited about doing some research on this, but my guess is the treatment is the same as trench foot--keep the skin dry. Always a bummer when the medical treatment is something you really don't want to do...

 

[BenjaminF]

We need some diving derm docs to get excited about doing some research on this, but my guess is the treatment is the same as trench foot--keep the skin dry. Always a bummer when the medical treatment is something you really don't want to do...

Drysuit?

Sorry. I couldn't resist.
On a more serious note, did any of the people who have this issue ever have eczema or something similar in the past? I know that I'm probably reaching here, but maybe something like that would cause a predisposition to such an issue?