Sunday, May 8, 2011

Dangerous Creatures of Teh Sea

DIVING MEDICINE

Diving Medicine is a growing medical speciality that focuses on the study, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses related to changes in pressure and the undersea environment. This area is rapidly expanding its knowledge base as the popularity of diving and undersea exploration continues to explode. A primary focus of diving medicine is to assess individual "Diving Fitness". As more and more people take to the water, there is an increased need to safely prepare or assess ability to dive among patients with various disease states. Particularly, dive physicians must understand how various ENT, Eye, Heart, Pulmonary, Gastrointestinal, Bone and Joint, Hematologic, Endocrine and Metabolic disease states affect the ability to dive. In addition, dive physicians can offer recommendations for people about flying and altitude, physchology and drugs, dental work, women specific concerns, hazardous marine life, long term effects of diving and specific treatment modalities if an accident occurs.
The primary accidents occuring in diving typically deal with effect pressure has on the various gases in your body. Most dive physicians treat patients for problems with equalizing pressure in their ears, sinus difficulties and of course barotrauma due to rapid ascension - "the bends". While these areas of dive medicine are perhaps most critical to understand in terms of patient care and treatment. I have chosen to speak on the more exotic, but rare, injuries from interactions with marine life.