THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100439
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Technology hasn't changed the world of Navy diving too much in the past 50 years. Divers suffering from ``the bends'' still enter a 15-foot-long iron tank that looks like a huge white sausage, and spend five hours getting enough oxygen to recover from the decompression sickness.
Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two has used the same recompression chamber, located onboard the barge YRST2 at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, since 1945.
In the wake of a half-century of medical and nautical breakthroughs, a few hours in the sturdy old chamber is still the best remedy for the confusion, joint pain, rash and weak limbs that comes with ``the bends.''
The Navy treats not only its own patients, but also civilian victims of diving accidents and carbon monoxide poisioning.
The chamber also offers a healing hope for cancer patients and others who have delayed wound healing from surgery or radiation treatments.
Patients from Portsmouth Naval Medical Center as well as from all the local civilian hospitals are routinely transported to the barge at Little Creek for 90-minute sessions of ``hyperbaric oxygen therapy,'' administered by Lt. Chris Leffler, a Navy physician, and a team of diving medical technicians.
This year 140 patients were treated in the chamber for delayed wound healing. Another 25 emergency cases were sent there and to two other recompression chambers located onboard the submarine tenders Emory S. Land and L.Y. Spear.
The two ships rotate duty locally on ``the bends watch.''
With advanced technology in diving equipment, ``the bends'' is not common. Almost as common as diving accidents is carbon monoxide poisoning, from car exhaust, a fire or a faulty furnace, Leffler said.
Today, however, the recompression chamber at Little Creek is used mostly to treat patients with delayed wound healing. They go through 20 daily treatments, each lasting 90 minutes.
The procedure calls for the patient to lie on a bed in the rear section of the chamber, where he breathes pure oxygen through a face mask.
The oxygen supersaturates tissues damaged from radiation therapy or surgery, helping blood flow to the areas and speeding healing.
An attendant sits with the patient, taking vital signs and monitoring equipment.
``They're breathing 100 percent oxygen, at high pressure, so they can have some problems,'' said Petty Officer first class Jim Whitmire, a corpsman who is a medical technician and works as an attendant in the recompression chamber.
``They can go into convulsions, have a decrease in vision, ringing in the ears. Twitching is common, so is getting irritable and mean,'' Whitmire said. ``The remedy is to remove the mask for a few minutes.''
The cool, dry chamber, which simulates the air pressure 45 feet below sea level for routine patients and 60 feet below sea level for those suffering from decompression sickness, is no place for people who are claustrophobic.
Its 2-inch thick iron walls completely block the outside world, and the treatment room is only large enough for one patient (two if they're sitting up), an attendant and medical equipment.
Although the chamber takes up a large portion of the barge's main ``room,'' its operation isn't the only responsibility of the 150-member crew of salvage tender craft YRST2, which has never left its berth since 1945.
The crew travels all over the world with Navy divers who have missions in the Mediterrean Sea, the Indian Ocean and along the Atlantic Coast. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by VICKI CRONIS, The Virginian-Pilot
Corpsman Jim Whitmire says a session in the chamber, which saturates
the body with oxygen, can cause some problems: ``Twitching is
common, so is getting irritable and mean.''
by CNB