MEETING: To breathe or not to breathe?

This is the last School seminar of 2009. It is entitled 'To breathe or not to breathe?' and is being presented by Peter Lee Buzzacott, our final year doctoral candidate.

Amongst recreational scuba divers, drowning is the most common cause of death and running out of air the most common occurence that precedes drowning. Running out of air is also frequently associated with ascending rapidly and, so, often precedes serious injuries such as embolism and decompression sickness (the bends). Identifying why people run low on air may have practical implications for the way the recreational diving industry conducts organised dives in WA, leading to improved safety. Towards this aim, a panel of diving experts identified possible causes of people running low on air. A survey was constructed to test those suggestions and then Peter joined organised recreational dives around the coast of WA, collecting data from 1032 individual dives. Case-dives where the diver returned low on air were compared to control-dives made by people diving at the same site at the same time but who returned with plenty of air remaining in their dive cylinder. Plausible associations were tested and potential risk factors for running low on air were fitted to a regression model. Were the experts right? Did the "likely causes" they suggest turn out to be significantly associated with low returning air pressures and, if so, should we (in WA) change the way recreational divers are taken diving each year? To find out, please join us on 10th Nov in Seminar room 3 at 11.00am.