Bring back check-ups to reduce dive deaths, says Maltese physician

Some scuba diving deaths could be avoided if regular medical checks became mandatory again, a leading physician specialised in undersea and hyperbaric medicine has said.

“When you look at the cases of people who die while diving over the past 10 years or so, you realise that there is a growing trend of people whose deaths are, strictly speaking, not caused by the diving itself but by their underlying medical conditions,” said the Maltese government’s chief diving medical officer, Stephen Muscat.

His comments come after three divers died in one day in two separate incidents in the Maltese Islands on June 17. Two of the dead appear to have had difficulties and surfaced too quickly, which causes decompression sickness because nitrogen bubbles form in the body’s tissues.

The third, a 67-year-old Austrian man, is believed to have had some underlying medical conditions.

The same seems to have been the case with a German woman, 46, who died while diving with her husband in an area known as Ix-Xatt l-Aħmar, in Gozo.

It used to be mandatory for all divers in Malta to have a medical examination certifying they were fit. The older you were, the more often you had to be tested and dive shops would not provide you with oxygen without such a certificate. That changed in 2003 and divers now only need to fill in a medical questionnaire in which they make a self-declaration about their health. If any response suggests a medical problem, a doctor’s examination is then required.

Source: www.timesofmalta.com