History of decompression research and development gets too high when compared to the ambient pressure. These bubbles, and products of injury caused by the bubbles, can cause damage to tissues known as "decompression sickness" or "the bends". The immediate goal of controlled decompression is to avoid development of symptoms of bubble formation in the tissues of the diver, and the long-term goal is to also avoid complications due to sub-clinical decompression injury. The symptoms of decompression sickness are known to be caused by damage resulting from the formation and growth of bubbles of inert gas within the tissues and by blockage of arterial blood supply to
Ratio decompression unacceptably high risk of decompression sickness. However, the technique has undoubted value in emergency situations where a dive plan is "blown" for one reason or another, and a personal dive computer is not in use. Although to date no independent forensic review of ratio decompression as a decompression algorithm has been conducted, in his book "Deco for Divers", Mark Powell considers ratio decompression, and analyses it in slightly simplistic "flattening the curve" terms, illustrating it by way of comparison to certain more traditional models. Nonetheless, given the limited amount of forensic research available on any decompression algorithm, it is difficult