Decompression sickness is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompression. DCS most commonly occurs during or soon after a decompression ascent from underwater diving, but can also result from other causes of depressurisation, such as emerging from a caisson, decompression from saturation, flying in an unpressurised aircraft at high altitude, and extravehicular activity from spacecraft. DCS and arterial gas embolism are collectively referred to as decompression illness.
The Royal New Zealand Navy is the maritime arm of the New Zealand Defence Force. The fleet currently consists of nine ships. The Navy had its origins in the Naval Defence Act 1913, and the subsequent purchase of the cruiser HMS Philomel, which by 1921 had been moored in Auckland as a training ship. A slow buildup occurred during the interwar period, and then perhaps the infant Navy's most notable event occurred when HMS Achilles fought alongside two other Royal Navy cruisers at the Battle of the River Plate against the German ship, Graf Spee, in December 1939.
Diving medicine, also called undersea and hyperbaric medicine (UHB), is the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of conditions caused by humans entering the undersea environment. It includes the effects on the body of pressure on gases, the diagnosis and treatment of conditions caused by marine hazards and how relationships of a diver's fitness to dive affect a diver's safety. Diving medical practitioners are also expected to be competent in the examination of divers and potential divers to determine fitness to dive.
The Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH), colloquially known by its initials or pronounced as "the Rah", is South Australia's largest hospital, owned by the state government as part of Australia's public health care system. The RAH provides tertiary health care services for South Australia and provides secondary care clinical services to residents of Adelaide's central metropolitan area, which includes the inner suburbs.
A hospital corpsman is an enlisted medical specialist of the United States Navy, who may also serve in a U.S. Marine Corps unit. The corresponding rating within the United States Coast Guard is health services technician (HS).
Devonport Naval Base is the home of the Royal New Zealand Navy, located at Devonport, New Zealand on Auckland's North Shore. It is currently the only base of the navy that operates ships, and has been in use as a navy base since 1841. The base consists of HMNZS Philomel, the Fleet Support Organisation, and the Fleet Personnel and Training Organisation.
A diving chamber is a vessel for human occupation, which may have an entrance that can be sealed to hold an internal pressure significantly higher than ambient pressure, a pressurised gas system to control the internal pressure, and a supply of breathing gas for the occupants.
HMAS Penguin is a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) base located at Balmoral on the lower north shore of Sydney Harbour in the suburb of Mosman, New South Wales. Penguin is one of the RAN's primary training establishments, with a responsibility for providing trained specialists for all areas of the navy. The current commander of Penguin is Commander Bernadette Alexander, RAN.
Jacobi Medical Center is a municipal hospital operated by NYC Health + Hospitals in affiliation with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The facility is located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City. It is named in honor of German physician Abraham Jacobi, who is regarded as the father of American pediatrics.
Divers Alert Network (DAN) is a group of not-for-profit organizations dedicated to improving diving safety for all divers. It was founded in Durham, North Carolina, United States, in 1980 at Duke University providing 24/7 telephonic hot-line diving medical assistance. Since then the organization has expanded globally and now has independent regional organizations in North America, Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific and Southern Africa.
The Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) is located on the New London Submarine Base in Groton, Connecticut. It is a subordinate command of the Naval Medical Research Command.
The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) is an agency of the United States Department of the Navy that manages health care activities for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. BUMED operates hospitals and other health care facilities as well as laboratories for biomedical research, and trains and manages the Navy's many staff corps related to medicine. Its headquarters is located at the Defense Health Headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia. BUMED has 63,000 medical personnel and more than a million eligible beneficiaries.
The United States Navy Experimental Diving Unit is the primary source of diving and hyperbaric operational guidance for the US Navy. It is located within the Naval Support Activity Panama City in Panama City Beach, Bay County, Florida.
Captain Albert Richard Behnke Jr. USN (ret.) was an American physician, who was principally responsible for developing the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute. Behnke separated the symptoms of Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE) from those of decompression sickness and suggested the use of oxygen in recompression therapy.
Simon Mitchell is a New Zealand physician specialising in occupational medicine, hyperbaric medicine and anesthesiology. Trained in medicine, Mitchell was awarded a PhD for his work on neuroprotection from embolic brain injury. Mitchell has also published more than 45 research and review papers in the medical literature. Mitchell is an author and avid technical diver. He also wrote two chapters of the latest edition of Bennett and Elliott's Physiology and Medicine of Diving, is the co-author of the diving textbook Deeper Into Diving with John Lippmann and co-authored the chapter on Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine with Michael Bennett.
In 2003, the Cayman Islands became the first country in the world to mandate health insurance for all residents. There are four hospitals in the Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman is home to the private Health City Cayman Islands, as well as the Chrissie Tomlinson Memorial Hospital. The public hospitals are the Cayman Islands Hospital ; and Faith Hospital on Cayman Brac.
A built-in breathing system is a source of breathing gas installed in a confined space where an alternative to the ambient gas may be required for medical treatment, emergency use, or to minimise a hazard. They are found in diving chambers, hyperbaric treatment chambers, and submarines.
Yehuda Melamed is an Israeli physician specialized in the fields of diving medicine and hyperbaric medicine. He is the founder of the first hyperbaric medical centers in the Israeli Navy, Rambam Medical Center and Elisha Medical Center in Haifa, the hyperbaric medical center in Asaf Harofe Hospital in Tzrifin, and together with Dr Hertz, the recompression chamber in Yoseftal Medical center.
Swedish Armed Forces Diving and Naval Medicine Centre is a centre which is responsible for education and training of divers for the Swedish Armed Forces. The centre is also responsible for research and development and conduct tests for diving medicine, and tests of underwater equipment. The unit is a part of the Swedish Naval Warfare Centre and is based in Karlskrona.
The US Navy has used several decompression models from which their published decompression tables and authorized diving computer algorithms have been derived. The original C&R tables used a classic multiple independent parallel compartment model based on the work of J.S.Haldane in England in the early 20th century, using a critical ratio exponential ingassing and outgassing model. Later they were modified by O.D. Yarborough and published in 1937. A version developed by Des Granges was published in 1956. Further developments by M.W. Goodman and Robert D. Workman using a critical supersaturation approach to incorporate M-values, and expressed as an algorithm suitable for programming were published in 1965, and later again a significantly different model, the VVAL 18 exponential/linear model was developed by Edward D. Thalmann, using an exponential ingassing model and a combined exponential and linear outgassing model, which was further developed by Gerth and Doolette and published in Revision 6 of the US Navy Diving Manual as the 2008 tables.
