Rest turned into disease >>>> Decompression sickness
Decompression sickness.
Caisson disease develops when a person enters an environment with changing pressure. As a rule, people who are engaged in underwater work or work associated with ascending to extremely high heights (those engaged in mountaineering, pilots) expose themselves to such changes.
But recently, ordinary people have begun to expand their range of recreational activities and are engaged in diving, mountain climbing or flying. And if earlier decompression sickness was considered an occupational disease, today people on vacation are putting their health at risk. To understand the danger of this disease, you need to understand the mechanisms of its occurrence.
Causes of decompression sickness.
Our body, being in natural conditions, every second experiences the pressure of the atmosphere. For many millennia, through natural selection, all internal systems of the body have adapted to experience a certain pressure from the atmosphere. As soon as a person gets into an environment with an unusual level of pressure (high or rarefied), the body immediately tries to adapt to it (or rather, all body systems are trying to adapt to this state), but this takes some time. Why?
The fact is that when breathing, a person absorbs a mixture of gases consisting of 70% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% inert gases (including helium and argon), which are carried with the blood through all tissues of the body. The products of processing of this gas mixture and other substances are thrown by cells into the intercellular fluid, then collected into the venous bed and excreted from the body.
When the pressure rises, the gas mixture we breathe dissolves in the tissues, and when the pressure drops sharply, it does not have time to dissolve. There is a supersaturation of tissues with gases and gas bubbles are formed, which include nitrogen (when breathing air) and indifferent gases argon, helium and others (when using special mixtures for breathing). Gas bubbles are formed where there is a greater amount of nitrogen and indifferent gas, that is, in the venous blood and in the intercellular fluid. The blood seems to "boil". Why is it just about gas mixtures, and not about oxygen ?! Yes, because the cylinders are filled with gas mixtures, and not pure oxygen (for example: nitrogen-helium-oxygen mixture, air-helium mixture, air-oxygen mixture, helium-oxygen mixture).
There is a concept of decompression, which literally translates as "cessation of compression". This concept is directly related to the painful sensations experienced by the body after some time, after leaving the zone of pressure drop. The body, when moving from a zone with a higher pressure to a zone with a lower pressure, begins to experience the effects of decompression. That is, the above-described processes of formation of gas bubbles occur in the tissues. These bubbles are dangerous in that they cause deformation of cell tissues, destroy cells, touch receptors, sending disordered signals to the nervous system, and can cause embolism (blockage) of the vessels of the circulatory and lymphatic system. The consequences of these processes are reflected in the symptoms of a disease called decompression sickness or decompression sickness. The same symptoms are experienced by people climbing high in the mountains, therefore they are also called symptoms of altitude sickness. Since the disease is very serious, you should pay attention to such symptoms and learn to identify them with decompression sickness, since the symptoms of this disease can occur with a significant delay.
Signs of decompression sickness.
In a severe course of the disease, more serious disorders can occur: paralysis, convulsions, fainting, suffocation, collapse.
Treatment of decompression sickness.
There are three forms of the course of this disease: mild, moderate, severe. Moreover, a mild form can very quickly turn into a severe one. Therefore, if you find the above symptoms in yourself, you should immediately seek help from a physiologist. As a rule, a person who is even at the stage of a mild form is considered as seriously ill and must be immediately transported (preferably lying down) to a special chamber (pressure chamber).
Recompression is the only treatment for decompression sickness. In this case, the sick person is again placed in an environment of high pressure and the gas bubbles dissolve. The next stage is again decompression according to a certain scheme (smooth).
Decompression sickness (decompression sickness) is a dangerous disease, because during its development the activity of the cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous systems is disrupted. There is a complication of decompression sickness - platisondilia (deformation of the body of the thoracic vertebrae). Timely seeking help and procedures in the pressure chamber will help save health, and even life.
Not all organisms are equally susceptible to decompression sickness . The resistance to the state of decompression (leaving the zone of high pressure) is influenced by the size of the organism, that is, the smaller the organism, the more natural and painless its exit from the danger zone. Therefore, birds calmly rise and soar at high altitudes with more rarefied atmospheric pressure.
Prevention of decompression sickness
If you are a diving lover, or you have a sports interest in mountaineering, or you entertain yourself with flights, then you should strictly follow the rules that will help you avoid such a complex illness.
There are certain decompression rules that all professionals are aware of. Transition from the high pressure zone to the low pressure zone(ascent from depth, ascent to mountains) is carried out in several stages. The entire path is divided into segments of a certain length (for example, 2 or 3 meters). After passing each segment, it is necessary from about a few minutes to an hour to be at this level of ambient pressure (swim if you are in the water, or take a break while climbing a mountain). The stopping time (or exposure in the language of professionals) depends on the length of the segment into which the path is divided, on the gas mixture in the cylinders and on the time spent at the maximum depth. And it is in this business that the dangers lie. If you are a diver, you must calculate correctly how much gas mixture you should have in the cylinders so that it will be enough for the return journey, taking into account all the stops. Otherwise, you will have to emerge in a short time, and for non-professionals, even a ten-meter depth of immersion is dangerous with a sharp rise. It is worth noting that usually in professionals (if we are talking about divers), decompression sickness does not develop when the water column is raised from a depth of 12.5 meters, but statistics suggest that decompression symptoms can develop even when lifting from a depth of 2-3 meters.
There are rules for diving without decompression:
- Having descended to a depth, you must stay on it for a strictly defined time, calculated for a given depth;
- At a depth of three to six meters, they make a stop and stay at this level for about three minutes in order to absorb excess gases in the tissues and bloodstream;
- In case of being at a depth for more time than calculated, the ascent is carried out with decompression stops (read above);
In order to fulfill all the conditions correctly, it is necessary to take a watch, a depth gauge, decompression schemes with you when diving and to know exactly the amount of gas mixture in the cylinders.
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