medicine
Doctor’s Orders: Dive In Experts say women divers face minimal additional health risks SOME MYTHS DIE HARD, BUT when it comes to the one about women divers being more prone to decompression sickness than men, leading medical experts are ready to put the final nail in the coffin. There is no significant difference in the rates of decompression sickness among men and women, according to doctors who specialize in diving medicine. And further, unless a woman diver is pregnant or trying to become pregnant, her job poses almost no additional health risks, medical experts say. “The primary concerns for female commercial divers in a predominately male environment are more social in nature than medical,” said Dr. Nick Bird, the chief medical officer for Divers Alert Network, a not-for-profit organization that provides emergency medical advice and assistance to divers. “As far as we know, there are no significant gender differences in the way our bodies respond to pressure. There is no data to support an assertion that there is a genderspecific propensity for ill health.” The decades-old myth about women getting decompression sickness more often than men stemmed from the fact that women typically have a higher body-fat percentage than men, and fat tissue takes longer to offgas after a dive. But by that logic, male divers who have a little extra body fat also should be more prone to decompression sickness, and that isn’t the case. “Over the years there has been a lot of interest in whether females are at greater or lesser risk of diving-related decompression illness than males,” said Dr. Richard Moon, the medical director at Duke University’s Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology. “The data do not support a major difference between the genders. Women are not at greater risk of decompression sickness, arterial gas embolism, oxygen toxicity or diving-related death.” The good news for women divers is that there is no medical evidence that says they shouldn’t be in the water. But the bad news is that on the issues of diving while pregnant or while taking oral contraceptives, there’s very little medical evidence, period. ABOVE: RT 95 Bridge Richmond, Virginia. Pile jacketing job reinforcement of piles on bridge. Image courtesy L. Vazquez.
30
UnderWater
JULY/AUGUST 2010
