Hello henryville:
Beverage Alcohol
The noxious effects of alcohol are usually attributed to dehydration. This would not occur rapidly after imbibing beverage alcohol.
The major worry that I would see in immediate effect would be one of analgesia and attitude adjustment. The diver would feel good and could miss the early warnings of DCS.
Pharmacological Effect
A while ago, there was a suggestion (see Zhang et al., below) that ethanol was a treatment for the bubbles of DCS. This was tried in rabbit (with a large decompression stress). They found that the alcohol seemed to reduce bubble formation.
When this was tried shortly thereafter (see Eckenhoff and Olstad, below) with human divers (and a smaller decompression stress), the effect was not found.
Dr Deco :doctor:
The next class in Decompression Physiology for 2006 is September 16 17. :1book:
http://wrigley.usc.edu/hyperbaric/advdeco.htm
References :book3:
Zhang LD, Kang JF, Xue HL. Ethanol treatment for acute decompression sickness in rabbits. Undersea Biomed Res. 1989 Jul;16(4):271-4.
Rabbits developed acute decompression sickness after staying at 6 ATA for 30 min followed by decompression to 1 ATA in 20 min or less. If the rabbits received an i.v. injection of 25% ethanol upon surfacing, all survived, whereas half the untreated control group died within 15-35 min after decompressing. In ethanol-treated animals, no bubbles were seen in blood vessels of visceral organs, muscles, and subcutaneous tissues at autopsy 60 min after treatment.
Decompression reduced platelet counts markedly in all rabbits, but in the control group the count stayed low, whereas with ethanol treatment the counts had reached the precompression level after 1 h and 24 h.
Eckenhoff RG, Olstad CS.Ethanol and venous bubbles after decompression in humans. Undersea Biomed Res. 1991 Jan;18(1):47-51.
We exposed 34 subjects to a 21 fsw dive for 48 hours, and administered ethanol
(0.5-1.0 ml pure ethanol kg-1 body weight) orally to 11 of them immediately after direct decompression. Doppler monitoring of both precordial and subclavian sites for 24 h postsurfacing revealed that all subjects from both groups had detectable bubbles, and that there was no difference in timing or magnitude between the 2 groups. These results do not support the recently suggested role for ethanol in the treatment of decompression sickness.
