AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Diving Question

Thanks, the DAN site said almost exactly what seashell posted, looks like I'll be waiting until much later this year to dive. Oh well, the water's not going anywhere!

Thanks for that, but Mathieu's Deli makes a very good point too, about scar tissue and off-gassing. This is also addressed by DAN.

Hi Mathieus,

Best as I know, while it is occasionally hypothesized that since blood circulation in scar tissue is poorer than that of uninjured tissue, SCUBA-related off-gassing may be impaired, there really is no evidence to support this conjecture. Moreover, there are individuals with very substantial amounts of scar tissue, both external and internal, who dive regularly without obvious transient gas phase problems. Additionally, I know of no diving medicine physicians who advise against SCUBA based solely on the presence of scar tissue.

In any event, I usually follow such research carefully, but I seem to have missed this recent activity. And I can find nothing recent on DAN's website.

Where did you hear about it? Anything more you can tell me?

Thanks,

DocVikingo

Good to see you posting Doc. Still diving Roatan?

As for what I was referring to on the DAN website, please see here, in the second paragraph of the answer:

http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/faq/faq.aspx?faqid=37

There was a talk given in Caye Caulker by two diving docs, one who runs the chamber (or one of) in Mexico, the other, also working there, was a British MD who had been doing research into diving physiology/accidents etc, and they were giving the talk to update divers / instructors on this subject. Unfortunately I don't recall the name of either of the doctors. This was over a year ago, and, also unfortunately, the only attendees at the talk were myself and three visiting foreigners. No local dive tour guides, DMs or instructors chose to attend.

I've done more than 8000 dives over a period of 35 years and
the older I get the more noisy my off-gassing seems to be.
:-)
KaraokeJoe enjoy some shallow dives and take it easy, Hol Chan is very shallow and you could dive for hours without putting a notable about of nitrogen in your system. Most of the theories about the physics of nitrogen loading and unloading are based on considerable amounts of dissolved nitrogen, which won't happen in some place like Hol Chan where to get deeper than 30 feet you have to use a shovel!

Excellent points with regard to off-gassing elbert, but all that said, there's still the stresses to the shoulder. Joe still has to get in and out of his wetsuit, gear, up and down a ladder, on and off a boat.

Thanks everyone. Having had the surgery now and being just over a week from getting there, I can honestly say that there's no way I'd even try diving yet. I'm actually hoping to even be able to snorkel. Worse comes to worst, I'll have to wait until June/July when we move out there. I suppose I can still wade in the shallows! Hope to meet you all soon!

Hope all goes well with the recovery. Best to you in your future move.

Hi seashell,

Very kind of you to say. Sadly, I haven't been to Roatan in a bit, but might do CCV again over the coming Thanksgiving week.

Thanks for the link. I was thrown off by Mathieus' reference to "recent research" by DAN blood circulation/inert gas elimination in scar tissue as DAN isn't doing any work on this subject.

As indicated in my initial post, best as I know the current general consensus in the diving medicine community is that scar tissue formation is basically a non-issue as far as DCS is concerned.

Hope you are well.

Regards,

Doc