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Decompression sickness (DCS; also called divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, and caisson disease) is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompression.
Decompression sickness is usually avoidable by following the requirements of decompression tables or algorithms regarding ascent rates and stop times for the specific dive profile, but these do not guarantee safety, and in some cases, unpredictably, there will be decompression sickness.
Altitude decompression may occur as a decompression from saturation at a lower altitude, or as decompression from an excursion to a lower altitude, in the case of people living at high altitude, making a short duration trip to low altitude, and returning, or a person decompressing from a dive at altitude, which is a special case of diving ...
Decompression sickness (DCS) occurs when gas, which has been breathed under high pressure and dissolved into the body tissues, forms bubbles as the pressure is reduced on ascent from a dive. The results may range from pain in the joints where the bubbles form to blockage of an artery leading to damage to the nervous system , paralysis or death.
The principal conditions are decompression illness (which covers decompression sickness and arterial gas embolism), nitrogen narcosis, high pressure nervous syndrome, oxygen toxicity, and pulmonary barotrauma (burst lung). Although some of these may occur in other settings, they are of particular concern during diving activities.
Decompression in the context of diving derives from the reduction in ambient pressure experienced by the diver during the ascent at the end of a dive or hyperbaric exposure and refers to both the reduction in pressure and the process of allowing dissolved inert gases to be eliminated from the tissues during this reduction in pressure.
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The uptake of gas by the tissues is in the dissolved state, and elimination also requires the gas to be dissolved, however a sufficient reduction in ambient pressure may cause bubble formation in the tissues, which can lead to tissue damage and the symptoms known as decompression sickness, and also delays the elimination of the gas. [1]