Pulmonary barotrauma after helicopter underwater escape training

Author(s):  
Jan Risberg ◽  
Author(s):  
B.G. Mathew

The increasing popularity of scuba diving as a sport necessitates that emergency personnel become familiar with medical diving problems. It is important to understand that pulmonary barotrauma can be sustained with an uncontrolled ascent of little more than 1 meter. This can occur under any circumstance in which compressed air is breathed under water. The most common is scuba diving or submarine escape training, but it may also be encountered when a person escapes from a submerged car or a child surfaces after breathing from an inverted bucket in a swimming pool. Two cases of pulmonary barotrauma are reported and the spectrum of presentation of this condition is discussed.Knowledge of this condition increases clinical awareness resulting in early diagnosis and effective treatment. It will be shown that it is better to over treat this condition, as the side effects of treatment are minimal and the results of failure to treat can be disastrous.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-226
Author(s):  
Ulrika Lindblom ◽  
◽  
Carl Tosterud ◽  
◽  

During underwater vehicle escape training with compressed air, a fit 26-year-old soldier suffered pulmonary barotrauma with cerebral arterial gas embolism after surfacing from a depth of 0.75–1.2 metres of freshwater or less. She presented with an altered level of consciousness. Rapid neurological examination noted slurred speech, a sensory deficit and right hemiparesis. Eleven hours after the accident, hyperbaric oxygen treatment was initiated using US Navy Treatment Table 6. The soldier almost completely recovered after repeated hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Given the very shallow depth this is an unusual case with only two similar case reports published previously.


Thorax ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
C R Broome ◽  
L J Jarvis ◽  
R J Clark

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (31) ◽  
pp. 46-51
Author(s):  
D. A. Temerov ◽  
L. V. Vorobyova ◽  
S. V. Vyzhevsky ◽  
S. B. Savchenkov ◽  
Yu. V. Marchenkov

The article presents a clinical case of successful treatment of a patient with prolonged asthmatic status. The pathogenesis of purulent-septic and other life-threatening complications developing as a result of the above critical condition is described. The positive effect of a differentiated approach in conducting respiratory support depending on the stage of the disease is justified: at the beginning, when airway obstruction is in the foreground, and in the future, when restrictive respiratory disorders develop. When conducting respiratory support, the most reasonable methods for ensuring airway patency were selected. The necessity of neurovegetative blockade and myoplegia for the prevention of pulmonary barotrauma during respiratory support by aggressive ventilation modes and with the goal of antihypoxic protection of the brain is emphasized. During the treatment of the patient, it was confirmed that the optimal regime for obstruction of the bronchi is forced volume-cyclic ventilation of the lungs to provide the necessary minute volume of breathing, and in severe pneumonia, in the case of relief of bronchial obstruction, respiratory support is carried out in pressure control mode for better air-oxygen mixture distribution in the airways. The need for early tracheostomy and daily therapeutic fibrobronchoscopy to ensure airway patency and treat pneumonia has been confirmed.


2019 ◽  
pp. 17-33
Author(s):  
Joel Edney ◽  
Geoffrey Loveman ◽  
Fiona Seddon ◽  
Julian Thacker ◽  
Karen Jurd ◽  
...  

Crew survival in a distressed submarine (DISSUB) scenario may be enhanced by the knowledge of the risks of different types of decompression sickness (DCS) should the crew attempt tower escape. Four models were generated through calibration against DCS outcome data from 3,919 pressure exposures, each for the prediction of one of four categories of DCS: neurological, limb pain, respiratory and cutaneous. The calibration data contained details of human, goat, sheep and pig exposures to raised pressure while breathing air or oxygen/nitrogen mixtures. No exposures had substantial staged decompression or cases of suspected pulmonary barotrauma. DCS risk was scaled between species and with body mass. A parameter was introduced to account for the possibility of the occurrence of some symptom types masking others. The calibrated models were used to estimate likelihood of DCS occurrence for each symptom category following submarine tower escape. Escape depth was found to have a marked effect only on predicted rates of neurological DCS. Saturation at raised internal DISSUB pressure prior to escape was found to affect predicted rates of all symptom types. The iso-risk curves presented are offered as guidance to submarine crews and rescue forces in preparation for, or in the event of, a DISSUB scenario.


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-44
Author(s):  
Brunon Kierznikowicz ◽  
Stefan Teresiński

Abstract The paper presents a case of pulmonary barotrauma in a scuba diver. Swallowing water and respiratory arrest during the ascent caused the trauma. Symptoms from the respiratory system (including the Behnke’s symptom) appeared several minutes after the completion of the dive and were not severe. However, symptoms from the peripheral nervous system, which appeared later, increased rapidly until the seizure episode and loss of consciousness. Hyperbaric treatment was applied in a decompression chamber on board the ship from which the dive was conducted. The treatment resulted in complete remission of symptoms without any consequences.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 660-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Farshchi Zarabi ◽  
Matteo Parotto ◽  
Rita Katznelson ◽  
James Downar

CHEST Journal ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 107 (6) ◽  
pp. 1648-1652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence W. Raymond
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-349
Author(s):  
Rahul Tyagi ◽  
Sameer Kumar ◽  
Parag Deshmukh ◽  
Rajeev Sivasankar
Keyword(s):  

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