WRT the on going discussion; There are two aspects to the tables we use, one is the numbers giving stop times for dive depth/time combinations, and the other part is the diving instructions that accompany those. For instance, according to BSAC88 you can do 15min at 30m every four hours till the cows come home, although most divers would agree that that is a little silly. So, the tables include an instruction that you do no more than 3 dives a day. Another instruction, much ignored, is to do no more than 20min of stops per day... Other included instructions concern the ascent rate, and not doing excercise directly after diving. We *all* suffer from bubbles after dives, and we can *all* find ways of forcing these guys through into our arterial system. PFO makes this easier. We don't need a completely different set of tables, we just need a set of instructions that can be given to divers who know that they have PFO and to what degree. For instance - add a deeper stop for 3min? add an extra 5min at 6m (3m for fine weather)? add 5min 'surface stops' before exiting the water, either onto shore or into a boat? 'suggesting' that PFO divers invest in an oxygen kit (I don't know how seriously to suggest that, it seems a little morbid). This is based on the idea that they need to be even more careful to ensure that the bubble load is reduced before exerting forces on the chest. I agree however that in the case of a PFO 'you can stick your thumb through' the diver needs to think about why he is diving, and perhaps try out wheelchair designs... On the whole though, although PFO does appear to carry an increased risk of DCI, the majority of PFO divers still knock off a couple of hundred dives before getting hits (based on the three DCS hits I know of near to me, and a couple of written bits I can half remember). if 1/10000 is acceptable to most of us, is 1/1000 really so much worse? I also tried fooling around with a compartment loading model and was thrown by the variable critical ratios bit. I didn't graduate to a real program though (or a computer) I just use tea-leaves to plan my stops now. Much more exiting. :-) Jason. Who is young and immortal. Yeah right.
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