Asthmatic + Diving = Death?

[deirdre]

As long as the air intake on the compressor isn't connected to a room full of pollen encrusted cats I'm good to go.

I laughed so hard at this I had a coughing fit.

I have mild athsma and have always been only a snorkeler as a result. I'd like to see what I can do, long run, to maybe get certified, but I'm not in a hurry.

(Hi, I'm new here, arrived here because I was considering an underwater housing for my camera for some snorkeling, and, well, one thing led to another.)

 

[Kevrumbo]

My solution, and I am in no way advocating this, has been to blatantly lie on diving legal waiver forms about previous history of breathing difficulty. Obviously, were anything to happen, I have signed away all recourse.

The sport is quite young and studies and data relating to asthma are not very common. Also studies into various ailments are usually economically motivated by drug companies - I cant really see what monetary incentive there would be into carrying out studies on divers with asthma or other respiratory illnesses.

So for the moment, I am a closet asthmatic puffing on my inhalers in the car on the way to the dive site.

You do what you have to do . . . ('nuff said).
Good Diving Karma and Best Health Wishes to You~!

I'm a closet asthmatic, but doing very well on Advair. Always have an Albuterol inhaler as my emergency stand-by, which I use as needed --but very infrequently/rarely over the thirteen years in my Scuba hobby. My airway reacts & gets a little "tight" on cold ambient air temperature days here in SoCal, which is why I prefer doing deep technical/decompression dives in warm water tropical locales.

I've had an emergency work-up for Pulmonary Embolism and Deep Vein Thrombosis, secondary to a DCS type I incident two years ago. My history of asthma was duly noted by the attending physicians, but whether it was a contributory factor is unknown. . . (though I wasn't having asthmatic symptoms during the dive which precipitated the DCS type I hit).