What are Mountain And Decompression Sickness?

Decompression Sickness:

It is also known as Dysbarism or diver’s palsy or caisson’s disease. When a diver descends to a great depth underwater, his body is subjected to the high pressure of the surrounding water. This leads to a collapse of the lungs unless he breathes the compressed air under high pressure. But breathing of air at high pressure increases the partial pressure of gases in the alveoli. The nitrogen is the main constituent of air and it diffuses into the blood and body fats. This makes the diver lose his strength and work capacity and he fells down. If he is lifted rapidly to the sea surface, he develops several severe symptoms of decompression sickness. With rapid fall of pressure, nitrogen is evolved from the body fluids and forms gas bubbles in the blood and tissues. This may block the pulmonary vessels producing serious shortness of breath. Subsequently, itching and local pain in peripheral nerves, dizziness and paralysis may be caused by the involvement of the brain and spinal cord. So in order to avoid the disease, the diver should be lifted very slowly to the sea surface.