Mending the Bends: Assessment, Management, and Recompression Therapy

Rating:
Summary: Finally....a dive medical book for the average diver!!!
Review: This book is concise and has information useful to the average scuba diver. It discusses decompression sickness and its treatment in terms that everyone can understand. The various chapters cover aspects of dive physiology that are pertinent for divers on every dive.
I highly recommend this book for both medical and non-medical divers. It is also a must for every dive master responsible for maintaining dive safety for all levels of divers.

Rating:
Summary: What every scuba diver should know about the bends
Review: This book was written after having the opportunity to travel all over the world, and see how dive injuries were treated in non U.S. medical facilities. Also, after working in a hyperbaric facility in the Caribbean, and treating numerous dive injuries, it became clear that the diving public had a marginal indoctrination at best, into hyperbaric injuries, how and why they happen, and how to manage them. In most hyperbaric facilities outside the U.S., the facilities are generally staffed by volunteers with a level of training comperable to a paramedic or Physician Assistant. Very few of these indivudals have had formal Hyperbaric training, and were primarily trained "on the
job". At some sites, they may even look to the divemaster to assist with medical treatment. If you are a divemaster, and working in the capacity where you may need to make a medical decision about one of your divers, this book can give you significant background information that may make that decision making dilemma a little easier. While this book is not meant to replace medical training, it can certainly make it easier to understand what can go wrong, and why we do what we do, when it does go wrong.