SS68-02 FRENCH RECOMMENDATIONS ON MEDICAL FOLLOW-UP OF HYPERBARIC WORKERS AND FITNESS FOR WORK

• Published in: Occupational medicine (Oxford) 2024-07, Vol.74 (Supplement_1)
• Main Authors: Loddé, Brice, Dewitte, J D
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0962-7480; 1471-8405
• DOI: 10.1093/occmed/kqae023.0391

In France, as in many other countries, the monitoring of hyperbaric workers is regulated. By hyperbaric workers we mean many people involved in occupational activities including underwater activities or activities leading to exposure to hyperbaric gas constraints in their working environment such as scuba divers, carrying out construction, repair or building supervision work, aquarium officers, workers on the technical side of facilities, veterinarians and caretakers, scientists carrying out fauna or flora surveys, geological or oceanographic researchers, coast guards, fishermen on one side and tunnel constructors or hyperbaric chamber care workers on another side. Hyperbaric exposure leads to a risk of a multiple possibilities of accidents or diseases such as decompression sickness (DCS), barotraumatic otitis, and dysbaric osteonecrosis. The likelihood of these accidents or diseases depends on multiple factors, external as well as individual. For this reason, many countries raised the importance of a medical follow-up for these hyperbaric workers. In France, the text regulating the monitoring of hyperbaric workers was adopted in 1991 and repealed in 2011. Since 2016, the learned societies of occupational medicine, hyperbaric medicine and maritime medicine have issued follow-up recommendations for these particular workers, including medical follow-up and para-clinical examinations to be adapted according to the worker health status and type of exposure. Here we propose to resume the methodology and some conclusions of these recommendations.