Venous gas bubbles in breath hold divers remained a focus of researchers this year, with a notable presentation coming from Danilo Cialoni and his EDAN team1. At EUBS 2017 they presented the extension of study previously reported and described in this blog. After discovering post-dive VGE in one breath hold diver, they studied VGE in 37 elite breath hold divers during their training in 42 meter deep pool with water temperature of 32 oC.
Breath-hold diving
BREATH-HOLD DIVING, CIRCULATING GAS BUBBLES, AND NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS
Decompression sickness has been the suspected cause of the post-dive symptoms of brain injury in breath-hold divers for a long time, and the quest for the proof of culprit has been ongoing, but without success. In the meantime, many possible explanations of neurological symptoms in breath-hold divers were proposed, including in-situ bubble development, lung barotrauma and consequent gas embolization, atherosclerosis, small vessel disease, transitory extreme elevation of blood pressure, and repeated hypoxic injury. (more…)
The Dive Lab 