Which Way Is Up?

To the well-known hazards of the currently glamorous sport of scuba diving, such as Cousteau's "rapture of the deep" and the decompression "bends," a Swedish physician has added another. It is of such deceptive simplicity that it has been generally overlooked. Pressure changes in the middle ear, reports Aviation Physiologist Claes E. G. Lundgren in the British Medical Journal, may cause dizziness so severe that the afflicted diver literally does not know which way is up and may swim to the bottom when he wants to head for the surface.

The Swedish doctor was struck by the fact that many diving accidents, some fatal and others nearfatal, could not be explained by the more dramatic dangers to which medical investigators pay most attention. He queried hundreds of Swedish sport divers and found, that no less than one-fourth of them had had occasional episodes of vertigo, and a few had it practically every time they dived. Dizziness struck at any depth from six to 100 feet.

Dr. Lundgren believes that the divers most prone to the dangers of dizziness are those who have suffered head colds recently, or severe ear infections even long ago. Head stuffiness makes it difficult for anyone to equalize the air pressure in his middle ears with that outside.

A decrease in pressure during ascent from the deeps may not be compensated quickly enough--and inequality of pressure in the two ears may upset the sense of balance. In the severe cases reported to Lundgren, some divers said that the surface or the bottom of the sea appeared to tilt at an odd angle, then rotate slowly and even start spinning rapidly. An obvious warning: people who have just had colds should avoid diving.

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