title: Probability of decompression sickness in no-stop air diving and subsaturation diving.
abstract: Probabilistic models allow estimation of the probability (Pdcs) that decompression sickness (DCS) will occur in any particular dive. Our objective is to provide Pdcs estimates for no-stop diving instructions used by the U.S. Navy and various other navies. To do so, we develop statistics-based (probabilistic) and intuition-based (deterministic) models using dive-outcome data from the U.S. Navy Decompression Database. We give special attention to subsaturation dives (defined as no-stop dives shallower than 40 fswg with bottom times between 4 hr and one day), for which experimental dives are scarce. According to our models, probability of DCS is 2% or less for current U.S. Navy no-stop air dive schedules and near 1% for the navies of Great Britain, Canada, and France; also the current U.S. Navy prescriptions for subsaturation dives seem to be appropriate. Our probabilistic models fail for deep dives; they do not avoid observed DCS cases in the calibration dataset and provide longer no-stop times than allowed by tables used operationally; we advocate prescriptions by our deterministic model for deep no-stop dives.
authors.affiliation: Navy Experimental Diving Unit, Panama City, FL 32407, USA.
authors.forename: H D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Van Liew
authors.forename: E T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Flynn
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002138:Calibration; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003665:Decompression Sickness / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004242:Diving / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D012016:Reference Values