May 2009    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 24, No. 5   What's this?

Why Divers Die: Part III

the older you are, the higher your mortality risk during a dive

from the May, 2009 issue of Undercurrent  

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In the past two issues, we’ve highlighted cases from Diver Alert Network’s 2008 report on dive accidents and fatalities (it actually discusses dive incidents that occurred in 2006). In this final part, we’re also adding notes from a study DAN’s medical experts did on the same topic, published in the December issue of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine. DAN researchers are interested in the effects of age on injury and death risk, because as people age healthier and stay active longer, those risks are inevitably higher. Reports from emergency-medicine departments indicate a substantial number of people injured in recreational sports are age 65 and older. They represent 17 percent of injuries in golf, 15 percent in tennis, 9 percent in fishing and 4 percent of diving injuries (although there’s no information on exposure duration).

For its study, DAN calculated the annual rates of dive-related deaths among DAN-insured divers between 2000 and 2006, and investigated the effects of age and sex on the death rates. Divers 60 and over had a relative risk four times greater than that of male teenagers. Young adult males had a four-fold greater risk than young adult females. However, the differences in risk associated with gender disappeared by age 60. Researchers think the youthful differences between the sexes reflect greater risk-taking due to men’s higher testosterone levels. However, the rates increased with age even when testosterone levels declined.

Matters of the Heart ...