Decompression sickness Decompression sickness Decompression sickness (DCS; also known as divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, or caisson disease) describes a condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurisation. DCS most commonly refers to problems arising from underwater diving decompression (i.e., during ascent), but may be experienced in other depressurisation events such as emerging from a caisson, flying in an unpressurised aircraft at altitude, and extravehicular activity from spacecraft. DCS and arterial gas embolism are collectively referred to as decompression illness. Since bubbles can form in or migrate to any part of the body, DCS
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