Hyperoxic Myopia

This affliction is also known as Lenticular Oxygen Toxicity. Although little understood, it has been widely documented in patients undergoing lengthy hyperbaric therapy. Consequentially, some rebreather divers on long projects have noted a similar effect. It seems that when partial pressures over 1.0 are experienced for more than 40 hours over a couple of weeks of diving, then divers have reported a loss of distance vision.  In most cases, vision returns to normal after a similar length break from diving. Howard Hall and his crew reported this condition as a result of working on a long IMAX feature utilizing CCRs. He reported stumbling through an airport at the end of filming while having great difficulty reading the overhead signs. Fearful of the loss of vision, he consulted a physician.  As promised, everything returned to normal after a period equal to the length of the project.

Comments

[Badie Yafi]

I heard that expedition divers who would be subject to this phenomena carry a set of corrective lenses for this occurence. Does that mean that the deterioration of eye sight is consistent? In other words, do you know if the symptoms would be that reliable that one would know how much their eye sight would deteriorate?