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Prevention

You can help prevent decompression illness and other types of barotrauma (decompression sickness) by following guidelines for diving taught in professional diving courses. The following actions increase your risk of developing decompression illness:

• Diving outside dive table recommendations

• Flying within 12-48 hours after diving: Most experts consider it reasonably safe to fly 12 hours after your last dive if you dove once, dove easily within the dive tables, and no decompression stop was required. For more complicated diving, waits of 24-48 hours have been recommended. In general, the longer you wait to fly after diving, the lower the risk of developing decompression sickness. Even long waits, however, do not reduce the risk all the way to zero.

• Diving in cold water
  
  
• Increased fat stores
  
  
• Dehydration
  
  
• Recent alcohol intoxication
  
  
• Vigorous exertion while diving
  
  
• Multiple repetitive dives
  
  
• Jogging shortly after diving
  
  
• Local physical injuries