Ears

darkside

Hi I am very new to rebreather diving, and I have noticed if diving over a period of 3 to 4 days, that I seem to get a full feeling in my ears, it does seem to go away, after a day or so. Dives are anything from 40mins to 1hour,nothing to deep,as I am still getting used to the unit. I have been OC diving since 1993, and not had this happen before, until moving over to rebreather.
I understand that inner ear can be affected by high PO2, but would have thought this would have been more of an issue, with long dive times. Has anybody else had this problem.

Beanie

yep

started to get it a bit after diving high o2 mixes OC but much more apparent and regular on CCR

I just try to clear my ears often after diving to try to flush them out a bit.

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Beanie
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6Gill

This is most likely due to Middle Ear O2 Absorbtion Syndrome, Rebreather divers maintain higher PO2s throughout the dive as opposed to OC divers (OC divers can also have these symptoms with longer decos on elevated PO2 i.e. 50% and 100% deco stops). The middle ear metabolizes O2 over a period of time after the dive which creates a slight negative pressure. This leads to the stuffy feeling and clearing of ears a number of times post dive. After a long CCR dive at 1.3 I notice this effect for up to 8 hours post dive.

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