Fitness To Dive
All divers should be free of conditions and illnesses that would negatively impact their safety and well-being underwater. The diving medical physician should be able to identify, treat and advise divers about illnesses and conditions that would cause them to be at increased risk for a diving accident.
Some reasons why a person should not be allowed to dive are as follows:
Disorders that lead to altered consciousness: conditions that produce reduced awareness or sedation from medication, drugs, marijuana or alcohol; fainting, heart problems and seizure activity.
Disorders that inhibit the "natural evolution of Boyle's Law": conditions or diseases that are associated with air trapping in closed spaces, such as sinuses, middle ear, lungs and gastrointestinal tract. Severe asthma is an example.
Disorders that may lead to erratic and irresponsible behavior: included here would be immaturity, psychiatric disorders, diving while under the influence of medications, drugs and alcohol or any medical disorder that results in cognitive defects.
Read more about this topic: Diving Medicine
Famous quotes containing the words fitness and/or dive:
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“I don’t take no dive for nobody. Whaddya think I am, a tanker!”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)