Dangers of free diving?

[Bill McIntyre]

We just had another death in Southern California. Clint Koberstein, a member of the LA Fathomiers and a superb diver by all accounts, was freediving for lobster from a kayak at the Channel Islands Harbor breakwater near Ventura.

His buddy found him floating face up on the surface. The buddy hauled him over to the breakwater, hailed a passing boat that called the Harbor Patrol. The Harbor Patrol administered CPR until they got him to an ambulance, about 35 minutes. He still had a pulse, but died later in the hospital.

 

[fcallagy]

Sorry to hear about the loss bill

 

[FreeSwimmer]

I would like to hear more about "Cyanosis -- a bluish or purplish tinge to the skin and mucous membranes."

 

[trux]

If you enter the term "cyanosis" into the search box, you get several threads speaking exactly about that. For example this one is not bad:
http://forums.deeperblue.com/safety/82285-blue-lips-warning-sign.html

 

[Siku]

Interesting thread Trux, thanks for pointing to it.

In it you say of cyanosis:
"At normal persons it [cyanosis or bluelips] would correspond to the arterial saturation (SaO2) of about 85%. However, at anemic persons you would paradoxically get the blue lips at much lower saturation - at an anemic person with 9 g per 100 ml it would be at SaO2 of 73% (hence much deeper in hypoxemia). "

Can you explain why an anemic person goes blue later please?

 

[trux]

Can you explain why an anemic person goes blue later please?

"Later" is not the right term. What I wrote was that anemic person may be much more hypoxic (close to the blackout) without any signs of cyanosis, while a person with high hemoglobin level can get blue while beeing very far from any dangerous level of hypoxia. This is because the blue color is given by the amount of deoxygenated hemoglobin. Normally, the central cyanosis occurs at about 5 g of deoxigenated hemoglobin per 100 ml of blood. So if you have a lot of it, you will get blue and still can have plenty of oxygen remaining, while when you have little (being anemic), you can be already pretty close to a blackout, while still not having 5/100 g/ml of deoxynated hemoglobin.

In absolute numbers, if we had the two persons side by side, and assuming all other parameters were identical (lung volume, O2 consumption, diving reflex,...), they would get blue in about the same time (after consuming oxygen from the 5g of Hb per 100 ml of blood), but the anemic person would be close to blackout (or blacked out already), while the other could continue much longer.

 

[luthfi]

my health insurance not cover all impact freediving, so must very careful