Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was applied to the common "decompression sickness" of divers to eliminate abnormal bubbles in blood vessels.

Weekend leisure travel is deeply loved by Chinese people, and diving in outlying islands and even overseas is the first choice for many young friends. In addition to finding beautiful diving spots, it is more important to dive safely.

Lin Renjia, director of the Department of Hyperbaric Oxygen and Trauma Medicine of the Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen Medical University, said that there were many patients in the hospital recently because of discomfort after diving. After diving for 2 years, I felt hip pain and limped; Have muscle and joint pain, headache, weakness of limbs, thinking it is a cold; Have serious gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and abdominal distension; Have chest tightness and occasional difficulty breathing; I have a lot of rashes all over my body. I looked for the help of various specialists everywhere, but my symptoms still didn't improve. After referral to the hyperbaric oxygen clinic, I realized that they were all decompression sickness.

Divers' common "decompression sickness" is commonly known as diver's disease. The decompression process when diving to the horizontal plane may be caused by suffocation during rapid ascent or ascent, but most decompression patients have normal decompression during the ascent in the water, and decompression still occurs.

The main cause of decompression sickness is that nitrogen will accumulate in the body with the increase of breathing and depth during diving. When the accumulation exceeds saturation, it must stay at an appropriate depth for a period of time when rising, so as to discharge excess nitrogen through breathing. If you omit the decompression step and float directly from the deep water to the water surface, the pressure around your body will drop too fast, so that the gas originally dissolved in the blood will directly expand into bubbles before you can exhale. These bubbles may directly block blood vessels and blood flow, leading to organ dysfunction in the body; Air bubbles can also appear in muscle joints and even the central nervous system, which can cause muscle joint pain in light cases and paralysis or even loss of consciousness in severe cases.

The main treatment of decompression sickness is hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which shrinks these bubbles that should not exist in the body and then eliminates them through breathing to reduce the damage of bubbles to blood vessels or tissues. It can also increase the partial pressure of oxygen, increase the dissolved oxygen in plasma, improve the oxygen transport in blood, and let the body tissues get more oxygen.

Lin Renjia reminded that all kinds of activities have certain risks. While spying on the underwater world and enjoying diving, we should also pay attention to our own safety and avoid emergency floating. Once abnormal symptoms are found after diving, you should seek medical attention immediately to grasp the golden period of treatment.