Neurological diving accidents in Japanese breath-hold divers: A preliminary report

There have been no reports of diving accidents involving Korean or Japanese professional breath-hold (ama) divers except for our 2 recent cases. We investigated a direct interview survey on their village to determine whether other ama divers had experienced any accidents during or after dives. Interview responses were retrospectively obtained from 16 partially assisted male ama divers belonging to the Utsu Union on Mishima Island, Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan. We questioned the divers about diving history (diving depth, length of the diving shift, number of dives and diving accidents), medical history (hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia, diabetes mellitus, and cerebrovascular diseases) and health habits (smoking and alcohol consumption). Nine of 16 ama divers previously had stroke-like neurological accidents, in which the most common symptom were unilateral motor weakness [7 cases] and sensory abnormalities [4 cases]. all of these neurological problems had manifested transiently. In addition, 13 of 16 divers had occasional episodes of dizziness, nausea and/or euphoria during such dives. Repeated deep breathhold dives may be harmful to the divers and cause brain involvement.