Commercial Divers’ Subjective Evaluation of Saturation

Abstract

Commercial saturation diving involves divers living and working in an enclosed atmosphere with elevated partial pressure of oxygen (ppO2) for weeks. The divers must acclimatize to these conditions during compression, and for up to 28 days until decompression is completed. During decompression, the ppO2 and ambient pressure are gradually decreased; then the divers must acclimatize again to breathing normal air in atmospheric pressure when they arrive at surface. We investigated 51 saturation divers’ subjective evaluation of the saturation and post-decompression phase via questionnaires and individual interviews. The questions were about decompression headaches and fatigue; and time before recovering to a pre-saturation state. Twenty-two (44%) of the divers who responded declared having headaches; near surface (44%) or after surfacing (56%). 71% reported post-saturation fatigue after their last saturation, 82% of them described it as typical and systematic after each saturation. Recovery was reported to normally take from 1 to 10 days. The fatigue and headaches observed are compatible with divers’ acclimatization to the changes in ppO2 levels during saturation and decompression. They appear to be reversible post- decompression.

The Assessment of Daily Energy Expenditure of Commercial Saturation Divers Using Doubly Labelled Water

“…Furthermore, the on and off work schedule adds a further challenge to adopting a healthy lifestyle and nutrition habits. Research suggests that a sense of fatigue post saturation can last 1–10 days, with divers reporting varied timescales of returning to daily habits ( Imbert et al, 2019 ). A personalised nutritional education approach should consider and encourage strategies that will help divers’ practice sustainable nutritional behaviours to help achieve energy balance during an operation and maintain their diet quality to promote cardiovascular health, body composition, and healthy ageing.…”

Functional Profiling Reveals Altered Metabolic Activity in Divers’ Oral Microbiota During Commercial Heliox Saturation Diving

“…Mild anemia is common after saturation diving since hyperbaric environment causes a depression of erythropoiesis (Kiboub et al, 2018a) and hemoglobin (Luczynski et al, 2019). Anemia is hypothesized to be partly responsible for the fatigue that saturation divers experience up to 1 week after decompression (Imbert et al, 2018), and vitB 12 is among the nutritional factors that should be monitored (Deb et al, 2016). Correlations have been observed between nutrient intake (e.g., vitamins) and its impact on the microbial abundance, diversity, and richness of the oral microbiome (Kato et al, 2017).…”

Evaluation of Divers’ Neuropsychometric Effectiveness and High-Pressure Neurological Syndrome via Computerized Test Battery Package and Questionnaires in Operational Setting

“…Previously, subjective post-saturation fatigue after deep diving (300 and 350 msw) was reported while other HPNS-related symptoms were present (Aarli et al, 1985). However, diver’s post-saturation physical and mental fatigue was also reported at shallower depths (110–136 msw) (Imbert et al, 2018). Therefore, we believe that subjective fatigue is independent of HPNS or any neurological symptoms.…”

“…The psychometric tests are criticized for a bias in leaning of repetitive tasks, while no such a bias exists with neurophysiological tests such as EEG and CFFF (Ortiz et al, 2005). The improved performance in cognitive tests, for example in the PVT test, could be due to this phenomenon or even differences in oxygen partial pressure (Imbert et al, 2018; Kiboub et al, 2018). Divers were recommended to perform the test everyday while they were in Storage, which some of them did.…”