Medical Questions

Deep Stop

I would like to know if deep stops are always recommended for recreational dives, if the depth of the deep stop must be half of the maximum depth reached or half of the maximum pressure reached, and if, for multi-day dives, it is always recommended to do this deep stop.

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Answer from DAN experts: 

The introduction of a deep stop at half of the maximum depth reached during recreational dives during the ascent phase seems to:

– significantly decrease inert gas bubbles detected by a Doppler scan after a dive

– reduce tension of inert gas in ‘fast’ tissues, which is an important fact to correlate with gas exchange happening in the spinal chord. 

Authors of scientific publications regarding this topic concluded that a deep stop can decrease the likelihood of suffering from decompression sickness for recreational dives within the depth of 30 meters and without mandatory decompression stops.