Overweight and aging divers at risk of cardiac arrest

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MD July 27, 2018

Middle-aged and older individuals are increasingly becoming scuba divers as a hobby. However, statistics show that many people in this age group have heart attacks under water.

The researchers found that many of these older people are no longer able to practice underwater hobbies. However most of them took these exercises when they were younger and never gave up as their health declined with age. The team of researchers found that between 1989 and 2015, the number of deaths in diving among people aged 50 to 59 years increased by 15 to 35%.

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Deaths in people over 60 have dropped from 5% to 20%, notes the study published in the last number European Journal of Preventive Cardiology . ] In examining the cause of these deaths, the team of researchers noted that drowning remained the leading cause of death among divers and that the second leading cause of death was heart attacks and strokes. The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia, called cardia c problems or events related to heart disease are one of the leading causes of death among divers. "Divers who have learned to dive years ago and are now old and overweight, with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, are at increased risk of dying," he said. All divers at the beginning of their dive are rigorously trained and tested for fitness, he said. Certification, however, lasts for life and often, when fitness has declined, the person still retains the certificate, the researchers warned.

For this new study, the team of researchers examined a database covering 736 million people. Of these, 113,892 reported that scuba diving was their main hobby. They noted that one third of these people were 50 years old or older and many of them had risk factors for heart disease that increased their chances of having a heart attack under water. More than half (54%) had smoked cigarettes at some point in their lives, the team noted. This was comparable to 46% smokers present or past among non-divers. About 48 percent of the divers were overweight and 43 percent of the non-divers were overweight in the study sample. High blood pressure and high cholesterol levels were observed in about one third of all individuals. Professor Buzacott said that new divers are not the ones with health problems. Health issues were noted among older divers who were fit at the time of certification. He emphasized the need for regular fitness and health badessments for all divers. Excessive weight should be lost and hypertension and cholesterol must be controlled, he said.

He added that the study did not discourage seniors from scuba diving. "The father of scuba diving, Jacques Cousteau, was diving at 90 and the oldest diver in the world today is 94," he said. However, the key is to stay fit for diving if one wants to scuba dive during their "senior years," he explained.