March 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 3   What's this?

A Shock to Divers’ Hearts

can portable defibrillators lower heart-related dive deaths?

from the March, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

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Jan Raczycki was diving the James C. King in Ontario's Fathom Five National Marine Park last July, when he became distressed 90 feet down. Pulled from the water, other divers tried to save him with CPR on the charter dive boat (there was no divemaster) and back on land, but their efforts were no use. Raczycki, 49, died, and the coroner said a pre-existing heart condition likely caused it.

The calamity reveals how self-reliant divers are expected to be, and that when things go wrong on a dive, it's up to the dive buddy and any others to attempt a rescue, regardless of their ability or experience. Also, the Baby Boomer generation that popularized scuba diving is aging, and that increases health risks during dives. According to Divers Alert Network (DAN), at least one quarter of the 80 to 90 diver fatalities in North America annually are attributed to heart problems.

George Harpur, medical director of the Tobermory Hyperbaric Facility and the coroner who pronounced Raczynski's death, said fitness to dive has been a problem for the past decade due to divers' increasing average age. The mean age of the nearly 250,000 North American DAN members is in the mid-40s. "One of the biggest differences we see now is that a number of deaths aren't essentially diving deaths - - faults related to diving technique - - they're often deaths while diving, because the demographics of divers has changed," Harpur says. Also, they're wealthier now and can purchase gear that lets them do riskier things....