scope:

PREFACE

ADivP-2(B) the Allied Guide to Diving Medical Disorders, is written primarily for NATO medical officers but it should also be of use to other NATO personnel who may be involved in the supervision of diving or the emergency care of divers. As well as containing information about the pathogenesis, signs, symptoms and treatment of diving disorders, the text contains details of diving procedures in order to give insight into the way diving problems arise underwater and the actions divers take to avoid them. A glossary of medical terms is included for non-medical personnel.

The key function of a NATO manual is to provide a common base of terminology and procedures so that NATO nations may operate together with the minimum of difficulty. The most important information presented within this manual is therefore not that which describes the causes and mechanisms of individual diving medical conditions, but that, which describes the common terminology that can be used to transfer information about cases between doctors of different nations. This is particularly true for decompression illness and the new descriptive terminology, which is described in Chapter 4. Another major advance facilitating the interoperability of NATO Nations is the agreement on a common treatment schedule for therapeutic recompression of decompression illness, which is described in Chapter 6. At the annexes, this manual also contains emergency contact information for obtaining specialist diving medical assistance from each NATO Nation, and details are given of individual Nation's therapeutic recompression tables.

Many of the recommendations about diving procedures put forward in manuals of diving medicine are based simply on empirical observations or theoretical knowledge about diving disease. To further the understanding of the origins of these recommendations, interested parties are referred to the general reference texts and key individual references that are quoted at the completion of each section and at Annex J.