SAFETY
Recreational Diving Fatalities & Underlying Health Issues by Dan Orr , President, Dan Orr Consulting
S CUBA DIVING FATALITIES are always fodder for the news media. “Woman dies after diving off Catalina Island coast,” “Scuba diver dies exploring Lake Erie Shipwreck,” “Missoula woman dies in diving accident,” . . . . It is truly unfortunate when someone is seriously injured or dies while scuba diving. It is an unimaginable tragedy, not only for the victim, but for everyone involved. It also gives the non-diving public the impression that recreational scuba diving is a dangerous sport. While there are risks involved in just about everything we do, scuba diving is not statistically more dangerous than a number of other outdoor sports. See “How Risky Is Your Sport?” graphic below. In 2008, Divers Alert Network (DAN) published an analysis
expert reviewers, the data indicated that a leading cause of disabling injuries was an acute cardiac event.” One of the basic tenets of personal diver safety is the im- portance of maintaining good mental and physical fitness for diving and a critical component of fitness to dive is cardiac health. Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death globally in the general population. Out of the nearly 18 million premature deaths annually (for those under the age of 70), nearly 40% are caused by cardiovascular diseases. Of these deaths, 85% were due to heart attack and stroke. We can reduce the likelihood of most cardiovascular diseases by considering behavioral and environmental risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diet, obesity, physical inactivity,
of 947 scuba diving fa- tality records from the DAN Fatality Data- base. The fatality records were from the years 1992-2003. The results of this analysis were published by Dr. Petar Denoble in the Journal of the Undersea
harmful use of alcohol and air pollution. It is imperative to under- stand the warning signs of cardiovascular disease and detect car- diovascular disease as early as possible so that management with counselling, medicines
and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHM 2008, Vol. 35, No.6 “Causes of Recreational Diving Fatalities”). This research identified the cascade of events that turned an ordinary recre- ational scuba dive into a dive with a fatal outcome. This cascade of events included: The Trigger – Harmful Action – Disabling Injury – Cause of Death. In this research, the number one triggering event, in 41% of the cases, was identified as “running out of breathing gas underwater.” In 2015, DAN researchers analyzed another, more recent group of scuba diving fatality records. The results of this analysis, published in the 2017 DAN Annual Diving Report, demonstrated that the number one triggering event in scuba diving fatalities was now “underlying health problems.” From information published by DAN in 2017 from 2015 accident data, autopsy results were available in 29 diving-related fatalities. In 16 of those (55.2%), the cause of death was identified as an acute cardiac event. Additionally, it was stated in the 2017 DAN Annual Diving Report , “From DAN’s
and, possibly, corrective surgical interventions can begin. While cardiovascular disease is of critical importance to the general population, in my opinion, it is even more critical in the diving population. This is due to the fact that divers may be in remote locations, potentially far from medical support or they are underwater in an environment that is very unfor- giving when it comes to the potential for loss of consciousness. The difficulty of rescue and recovery of an unconscious diver underwater can be problematic and reduce the overall chances of survival. Although it is disturbing that these cardiac-related fatalities occurred while participating in an otherwise safe and enjoyable sport, what is also distressing is that a significant number of those who died as a result of a cardiac event associated with scuba diving had signs and/or symptoms that could have been recognized as cardiac-related before or during the dive, but they continued to dive anyway. Had these divers or one of their diving companions simply questioned whether it was
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