Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Late Consequences of the Neurological Forms of Decompression Sickness
  1. I. Rózsahegyi
  1. Institute of Industrial Medicine, Budapest, Hungary

    Abstract

    Various neurological forms of decompression sickness are classified and an inquiry two and a half to five and a half years after the acute illness is reported.

    One hundred subjects with decompression sickness of the central nervous system were examined.

    In more than half of the cases the clinical picture was that of chronic encephalomyelopathy, vegetative neurosis, or psychosomatic symptoms. Symptoms were found in three-quarters of the cases, and objective signs in the same proportion. Fourteen patients were unable to work two and a half to five and a half years after the acute illness, and only 13 of 100 patients were reported to be reasonably well.

    The best and only adequate treatment for decompression sickness is recompression. After recompression the prognosis for recovery is increasingly poor the longer time passes, and after the first six weeks there is no hope of a perfect recovery.

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.