Diving Medicine

Gulf Coast Diving Medicine

  • Diving Physicals
  • Pulmonary Function Test (Spirometry)
  • Quantitative Respirator Fit Test
  • Audiograms
  • Chest X-rays and Long Bone Series
  • Physical Demand Tests
  • Management and Care of Dive Injuries and Decompression Incidents
  • On-call and Telephone Medical Support
  • 24/7 On-site Alcohol and Drug Testing from Baton Rouge to Venice

Diving Medicine

 

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.

Hyperbaric medicine is a corollary field associated with diving, since recompression in a hyperbaric chamber is used as a treatment for two of the most significant diving related illnesses, decompression illness and arterial gas embolism.

Diving medicine deals with medical research on issues of diving, the prevention of diving disorders, treatment of diving accidents and diving fitness. The field includes the effect of breathing gases and their contaminants under high pressure on the human body and the relationship between the state of physical and psychological health of the diver and safety.

In diving accidents it is common for multiple disorders to occur together and interact with each other, both causatively and as complications.

Diving medicine is a branch of occupational medicine and sports medicine, and an important part of diver education.

 

Biography – Dr. Brain Bougeois, MD.