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At a recent seminar, residents and faculty from the Department of Anesthesiology got a unique lesson in lung physiology. It was not provided by a world-renowned physician sharing a PowerPoint presentation, but rather by a world-record holding diver demonstrating her unique breathing techniques.
The guest of honor was champion free-diver, Tanya Streeter, designated by Sports Illustrated as the world's "Most Perfect Athlete."
Streeter has safely performed dives down to 525 feet on a single breath. Such tests of extreme pressure on the body’s circulatory and pulmonary systems intrigue Massimo Ferrigno, MD, director of the Anesthesia Department’s physiology laboratory, a diving physiology expert and an ex commercial diver himself, to learn more about how lungs can function under a pressure that is 17 times the normal pressure on land.
“Observing Tanya’s extraordinary abilities gives physicians a unique opportunity to examine respiratory and cardiovascular physiology ‘under a magnifying lens’,” said Ferrigno. “Understanding how her lungs and cardiovascular system compensate under such stressful deep-sea conditions may suggest better ways for common people to dive safely and even provide us with new ideas about common medical problems such as cardiac arrhythmias and pulmonary edema, that can be triggered by extreme breath-hold diving.”
Researchers at BWH are looking forward to working with Streeter to study her heart rate, blood flow distribution, lung volume (which initial studies show to be twice the average of woman her size) and other physiological parameters to find out how her body can withstand extreme pressures without the clinical problems that you would expect from conventional physiological knowledge.