The ENT sphere is frequently solicited during scuba diving or freediving.

Special mention should be made of the treatment of stress with beta blockers. It is curious that such a treatment is proposed for a discomfort, sometimes important, which does not constitute a disease…

This thesis was written in 2006. Its aim was to investigate, in an objective way, if there were more diving accidents in smokers than in non-smokers and, in particular, undeserved accidents. Then, if so, to judge the speed and quality of recovery in both cases. In 2006, there were very few, if any, articles dealing with…

The ear is the most important organ in diving and any ear disease will influence the medical decision. The list is the same as that of the National Medical and Prevention Commission, although the rules may be less rigorous, especially for definitive contraindications, as we shall see. But to say this is to know the diver or the freediver, his motivation, his past, his maturity…

This approach only concerns freedivers who have a problem with their tubes, both during descent and ascent, and who are considered to be healthy. On the other hand, we will only mention recreational freediving: deep freediving generally does not pose a problem for the divers concerned, who master the techniques that we will recall here. Let us specify from the outset that each case is…

For the sake of clarity, we will refer to incidents or accidents that affect the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear respectively. This distinction is schematic: an incident occurring in the outer ear may affect the middle ear and it is not uncommon for the middle ear to be associated with an accident occurring in the inner ear. The outer ear, two…

Well known to many freedivers, Doc's Proplug certainly deserves a medical commentary, especially since everything has been said about these ventilated (or non-ventilated) plugs, including many fanciful claims. Unquestionably, these ear protectors have their interest, that is why we wanted to mention them here. These anatomical plugs, of American manufacture (Scott, 1977), were initially created for the needs of divers and surfers. By extension, the…

An epistaxis is a spontaneous discharge of blood from the nose. Epistaxis may be accompanied by fronto-orbital pain. In case of heavy bleeding or posterior epistaxis, swallowed epistaxis may be associated with oral bleeding. Epistaxis can be differentiated from : hematemesis and hemoptysis. Hematemesis : emission of red or brownish blood from the mouth, during vomiting efforts. Hematemesis is a sign of digestive bleeding, which,…

The prefix "dys", taken from the Greek, means "difficulty". Dysbaric otopathies in diving are therefore pathologies of the auditory system, linked to the difficulty of balancing encountered in diving. The ear is the seat of balance and hearing. The seat of hearing is the cochlea or limaçon. The seat of balance is the vestibule which includes the utricle, saccule and semicircular canals. Dysbaritic otopathies can…

Man does not die as long as he can dream. And the dream of Homo Delphinus will live on as long as man has not totally destroyed the sea. In his book Homo Delphinus , published in 1989 (which was an international success and became the "bible" of many freedivers), the Frenchman Jacques Mayol, the first man to have reached the theoretically unattainable depth of…

The Eustachian tube is a duct that connects the tympanic cavity with the rhinopharynx (i.e. the back part of the nasal cavity). It opens passively at each swallow, allowing to balance the air in the case, thus equalizing the atmospheric pressure on both sides of the tympanic membrane. Its size evolves during growth : from 18 millimeters long on average in children, it will be…

Mr B., 70 years old, confirmed diver, MF2, comes to consult in 2017 for vertigo evocative of alterno-baric vertigo these symptoms are relatively recent and disturb him a lot. These symptoms are relatively recent and spoil the pleasure of diving, especially, we will see it again, that sometimes a tympanic perforation of the right ear is associated with it, often isolated, independent of the described…

Some medical conditions are accompanied by a spontaneous drop in PaO21 or are likely, by their own pathology, to rapidly aggravate the "normal" hypoxia2 in the freedivers : the latter will therefore reach a hypoxic threshold2 more rapidly, which may cause a loss of motor control (or samba3) or even hypoxic syncope. It is therefore important to be aware of these conditions, both for the…

One is aimed at divers, the other at freedivers : it is about immersion oedema and pulmonary squeeze. If the first one can be very serious and fatal, the second one seems to be much less serious. A few years ago, it was thought that these pathologies were rare (1% of cases). We now know that they are recurrent (about 12%) and potentially serious. The…

In diving, decompression sickness (DSS) is caused by the massive release of gas bubbles into the body. Insufficiently eliminated by the pulmonary emunctory, they slow down or stop the blood circulation, if they appear in the vessels and create a tissue hypoxia, if they are released in the tissues. These bubbles usually occur during an ascent that is too rapid and/or during a stop that…

Results of a study carried out on 32 divers, in a diving club of IDF. The first damage of the inner ear is the 6000Hz and it affects more freedivers than scuba divers. On the audiometric curve of 32 tested divers: 87% of the divers in scuba diving present a specific attack of this frequency; this attack touches 95% of the pure freedivers and scuba…

The blast is the set of organic lesions caused by the shock wave of an explosion (blast effect and sound deflagration). We all have in mind war movies where the deflagration of a bomb makes a soldier totally deaf and his ears bleed. Or the American parachutist who was suspended for several hours and who became deaf because of the bells that were ringing near…