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Rich,

>It was explained to me by my "bends doc" that I was more susceptible
>to future DCI primarily because my previous hit left me with scar
>tissue, and scar tissue has poor circulation, making it an *extremely*
>"slow" tissue. Other than that, I know of no other references to
>correlating scar tissue or other sites of healed damage to increased
>susceptibility to bubble formation/trapping.  I'd be interested to
>know what you find out more on this topic.

At any one point in time only a very small percentage of the
capillaries in your body are actually open and delivering blood to the
tissues.  I forget the exact fraction, but it's less than 1/10 (I
vaguely remember something like 1/15).  I have to look this up tonight
when I get home.  This is because not all tissues require blood flow
to them all the time.  The three primary organs are that require a
continuous blood flow are the heart, brain, and liver.  Other than
that, tissue can survive for quite some time with no blood flow.  This
is why a severed appendage can be reattached - the standard period of
time quoted for something like this is 24 hours (you keep the tissue
cool to keep metabolism low, but do NOT put it in direct contact with
ice as that would damage the tissue)!

With this in mind, I'm curious as to how the circulation in the body
shifts over time so that the entire body get slowly perfused and how
this varies during the period of a dive.  I would think that many of
the "currently operating" peripheral circulatory systems get shut down
- as I said, most are already shut down (even in a dry suit your limbs
will be cooler than your core).  I'd assume that some amount of
ongassing occurs in the peripheral system prior to this shutdown and
the offgassing therefore takes much longer.

Has anyone taken this into account in their deco modelling???

-Carl-

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