SAIMSARA Journal

Machine-Readable Science • ISSN 3054-3991

Diving Health Risks and Benefits: Scoping Review with ☸️SAIMSARA.

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Sports Medicine

Issue 5, Volume 1, 2026

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DOI: 10.62487/saimsarab0ac9327

Editorial note
• Last update: 2026-06-03 10:18:02
What is this paper about
This review shows that diving is not simply dangerous or beneficial, but a health-sensitive exposure where cardiac disease, obesity, barotrauma, decompression illness, and poor emergency planning define much of the risk. The full read maps 139 references across 273 original studies and over 105 million observations, clarifying when scuba, breath-hold, occupational, and therapeutic diving may be safe, harmful, or clinically useful.
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Abstract: To characterize how diving relates to human health outcomes, risks, benefits, screening needs, and implementation priorities across recreational, occupational, military, competitive, breath-hold, and therapeutic diving contexts. The review uses 139 references and builds its evidence map from 273 original studies with 105047888 total participants/sample observations (topic-deduplicated ΣN). Across diverse diving contexts, the evidence indicates that health outcomes are strongly shaped by pre-existing medical vulnerability, cumulative pressure exposure, and the quality of screening and supervision, with cardiac disease, barotrauma, and decompression-related injury emerging as the most recurrent harms. At the same time, supervised recreational and adaptive diving was associated with low decompression illness rates and measurable mental-health and rehabilitation benefits, including a 0.41 per 10,000 dives DCI rate in one charter operation and meaningful GHQ-28 improvements in veteran programs. This dual signal suggests that diving is neither uniformly hazardous nor uniformly protective, but rather a health-sensitive activity whose risk-benefit balance depends on individualized fitness assessment and operational safeguards. Future work should prioritize prospective diver registries linking exposure, screening, and long-term cardiopulmonary, neurological, and psychosocial outcomes to clarify which populations benefit and which require stricter risk controls.

Keywords: Scuba diving; Occupational diving; Diving medicine; Cardiovascular disease; Barotrauma; Mental health; Fitness to dive; Pre-existing conditions; Diving fatalities; Health-related quality of life

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