Need for recompression chambers

[MORGAN]

The last two posts are commendable examples of brevity. Two posts and two points made with a total of 8 letters and 2 punctuation marks.

[skip]

IWR.

or PIHC? Portable Individual Hyperbaric Chamber

http://www.bluefootdiving.com/hyperbarics.html

skip

[tursiops]

or PIHC? Portable Individual Hyperbaric Chamber

http://www.bluefootdiving.com/hyperbarics.html

skip

The Hyperlite will only compress to 75fsw, not the 165ft some treatment tables require.

[skip]

The Hyperlite will only compress to 75fsw, not the 165ft some treatment tables require.

I don't know, but the brochure claimed that 95% of all diving recompression was table 6 (more than one time sometimes too). So it sounds like it might cover the majority of needs. Seems like the NSS/CDS and NACD could get together and purchase one of these to keep handy in cave country. Legal issues probably make it impossible for them to sponsor, but what about signing off on a liability waiver ahead of time, so only those "on the list" would be able to use it? Not sure what training is involved, but that could be figured out.


Seems better to make our own arrangements, rather than relying on hospitals to buy, maintain, and staff. Some on here complain of "socialism," but then expect hospitals to provide. Self-reliance I say.
skip

[FW]

I don't know, but the brochure claimed that 95% of all diving recompression was table 6 (more than one time sometimes too). So it sounds like it might cover the majority of needs. Seems like the NSS/CDS and NACD could get together and purchase one of these to keep handy in cave country. Legal issues probably make it impossible for them to sponsor, but what about signing off on a liability waiver ahead of time, so only those "on the list" would be able to use it? Not sure what training is involved, but that could be figured out.


Seems better to make our own arrangements, rather than relying on hospitals to buy, maintain, and staff. Some on here complain of "socialism," but then expect hospitals to provide. Self-reliance I say.
skip

About 30 years ago, a dive shop in Branford started a fund to purchase a chamber just for divers. Sadly, the shop owner fell on hard times, and absconded with the chamber fund, and left his dive shop to the creditors. A lot of divers had donated to the fund, some over $1000! A few had invested in the shop itself, and were left with not much more than bills. One of them took over the shop, and made a go of it for nearly 20 more years.

[Greenwood_60]

I agree with you skip. I'd love to see a community DCS team, with either a portable chamber like you posted, or a serious IWR kit.

[gschaut]

The Hyperlite will only compress to 75fsw, not the 165ft some treatment tables require.

At the risk of being the voice of doom...

I am reading more and more reports of bent divers going for hours or days without treatment because there are no chambers available, or they get stuck in a medical system that does not even RECOGNISE the significance of DCS.

It may get down to the point of "anything at all" or nothing.

AND if it does come down to a "group" like NFSA or NACD, CDS, KUR, WKRP, ect having to BUY and STAFF our own volunteer chamber in order to have something available in cave country- count me in for financial support!

There are two things that frighten me about coming down to cave dive in North Florida: DELETED having to be flown up to Duke University if I get bent.

[kwinter]

I agree with you skip. I'd love to see a community DCS team, with either a portable chamber like you posted, or a serious IWR kit.

I don't know how "serious" it is, but I have a FFM connected to a 3-way ball valve with 2 Omniswivel QD check valves, and 2 first stages with mating Omniswivel QDs. Toss in a butt load of O2 cylinders and one with air and you're good to go. One of these days I will rig up an O2 rebreather to the mask instead.

[Greenwood_60]

I don't know how "serious" it is, but I have a FFM connected to a 3-way ball valve with 2 Omniswivel QD check valves, and 2 first stages with mating Omniswivel QDs. Toss in a butt load of O2 cylinders and one with air and you're good to go. One of these days I will rig up an O2 rebreather to the mask instead.

That's a start. I'm thinking FFM, lot's of o2, 80%, 50%, air, some sort of a small deco habitat (may be as simple as a rubbermaid bucket inverted on the cave ceiling), a generator, tankless water heater and pump... all stored in a trailer somewhere between Ginnie and Peacock. A bent diver would send someone to make the call, get back down to a comfortable depth with whatever gas is remaining, and wait for help.

[MORGAN]

I wonder if a publicity campaign would make any difference. With the huge amount of diving that goes on in and around Florida, and all the money it brings to the state, one might think that if any place on earth ought to be well supplied with emergency hyperbaric resources, it would be Florida. Especially when the facilities already exist, and it's mostly a matter of funding the on-call staffing.

This reminds me of when trauma centers were first being formally designated in the 1970's. When there was federal money available to develop trauma center programs, lots of hospitals wanted to be trauma centers. When the federal money dried up, and it became evident that lots of trauma patients were uninsured as well as being very expensive to care for, quite a few hospitals dropped their trauma center designations.

Hyperbaric programs are very cost effective for most of what they do: scheduled treatments for patients with slow healing or non-healing wounds. The patients are scheduled one right after the other, and when staff are being paid, patients are in the chamber generating revenue. Hospital financial people like this. What they don't like is having to pay staff to be on call for all the time when the chamber is empty and not generating revenue, on the chance that a bent diver or a CO poisoning patient will come along.

Bent divers are a much different cohort than trauma patients or wound management patients. There are a lot fewer of them (fortunately!), they tend not to be indigent, they are likely to be well insured, and the vast majority of them will be treated as outpatients and not require admission to the hospital after treatment. From a hospital bean-counter point of view, they're a desirable group of patients, except for two things: They tend to show up at odd hours, and they need urgent treatment which doesn't lend itself to being scheduled ahead of time and is apt to disrupt the orderly schedule of wound management patients. I can see why hospital administrators might choose not to spend money to be prepared to manage the very small number of bent divers, except that I'm a cave diver, and I hope that if I get bent and show up at a big tertiary center with a hyperbaric program, like Shands, in need of emergency hyperbaric therapy, they'll provide it.

As much as I whine about the hospital bean-counters, (Hey, I'm an emergency/critical care RN - a certain amount of hostility towards the suits is in my DNA ) I do understand that hospitals have been under increasing financial pressure for decades, and it's going to get worse. Fortunately, there aren't many bent divers. Unfortunately, the small number of bent divers doesn't generate enough money to make treating them a financially attractive proposition. If there were enough bent divers to keep the chambers as busy as the cardiac patients keep the cath labs, every hospital would want a chamber and all the bent divers they could get.

So what do we do? Try to raise money to fund on-call staffing at existing chambers? Fund a dedicated chamber? Lobby the legislature to address this on behalf of the thousands of divers and the millions of dollars that diving generates in Florida? I dunno.

Mike