Background
Treatment of DCS utilizing the US Navy Treatment Table 6 with oxygen at 18m is a standard of care. Significant delay to treatment, difficult transport, and facilities with limited experience may lead one to consider on site treatment. Surface oxygen for first aid has been proven to improve the efficacy of recompression and decreased the number of recompression treatments required when administered within four hours post dive. IWR to 9 m breathing oxygen is one option that has shown success over the years IWR is not without risk and should be undertaken with certain precautions. IWR would only be suitable for an organised and disciplined group of divers with suitable equipment and practical training in the procedure.
The principle behind IWR treatment is the same as that behind the treatment of DCS in a recompression chamber: an increase in ambient pressure will reduce the volume of the bubbles allowing better blood transport downstream of the bubbles. If the casualty can breathe pure oxygen further improvements will occur because the increase in the proportion of oxygen in the blood may keep previously oxygen-starved tissues alive and the oxygen will remove other inert gases from the bubbles making the bubbles smaller.
The use of in-water oxygen at 6 meters has been shown to reduce bubble loads in divers compared to divers breathing oxygen on the surface.
Read more about this topic: In-water Recompression
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)