0232: Recreational scuba diving in patients with congenital heart disease: proposal for guidelines

The number of people wishing to practice leisure scuba diving is constantly increasing. Currently, Congenital Heart Diseases (CHD) were so far considered contra-indications in the list edited by the Medical and Prevention Commission of the French Underwater Federation. However, due to the progress in their care, the number of living patients with CHD increase. Their quality of life has been also improved, allowing them to practice physical and sports activities the beneficial effect of which has been proven. Thus the question of fitness to dive is put forward. We thought necessary to reconsider the problem in order to define parameters to help in the decision to allow or not diving for these patients. Because of their diversity and of an important heterogeneousness even within a defined group of CHD, we tried to avoid drafting a boring catalog. Thus we propose for every patient a practical and precise evaluation of its capacity from clinical criteria and further common evaluation obtained during usual follow-up of these CHD. The practice of the scuba diving could be authorized according to the clinical and rhythmic status, echocardiographic parameters and physical fitness assessed by exercise testing with gas exchange analysis.