Scuba diving and fetal well-being: a survey of 208 women.

Scuba diving is an increasingly popular sport among women of childbearing age. It causes physiological changes that are possibly lethal or teratogenic to the fetus. The subject of diving during pregnancy is seldom mentioned in diving courses, however, and few obstetricians are familiar with the physiology of diving. The study employed mailed questionnaires for description and comparison of the extent of diving and obstetric and fetal outcome of 208 women divers, 136 of whom dived during one or more pregnancies. Depths to which these women dived averaged 42.6 ft; 24 women, however, reported dives deeper than 99 ft during the first trimester. I analyzed the prevalence of six specific fetal complications and found that the frequency of birth defects was significantly greater among children from pregnancies during which women dived (P < 0.05) but was within the range for the general population.