Monthly Briefing December 2025

We have been able to arrange an opportunity for DMTs to renew their invasive skills capabilities. It will occur in association with a DMT training course scheduled for February and sponsored by the  Moody Gardens Undersea Medicine Program in Galveston, TX. A top notch DMO instructor faculty has been assembled (CVs available on request). Program personnel have kindly agreed to allow practicing DMTs to join the final two days of the course for the skills sessions and have added this as an option within the attached announcement. A limited number of places are available so act now if this interests you.

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Additional details have emerged regarding the likely cause of the July fatal hyperbaric chamber fire in Lake Havasu, Arizona. They are to be found within a MAUDE (Manufacturers and User Facility Device Experience) database submission. Federal Drug Administration MAUDE reporting is mandatory for manufacturers, importers and device user facilities regarding device-related adverse events that contribute to death or serious injury. A report submitted by Professional Piping Systems (Report number MW5174457), the company that manufactured the chamber, noted among other things that “remnants of several electronic devices were found inside the chamber, including a handheld communications device, headset, earphones, brain-tap, battery power banks, cell phone, electronic tablet, charging cables, fan, and possibility a red-light therapy device. Bulky blackened masses were present with signs of swelling and cracking, which are suspected to be the lithium-ion battery packs powering multiple of those items. It is suspected that the lithium-ion battery packs were the source of ignition that caused a flash fire within a sealed chamber”. This is a stunning and inconceivable revelation. One must wonder about the degree of training the deceased facility owner, lacking appropriate medical licensure, had undergone to prepare himself to operate his facility and the fact he was “treating” himself alone in a chamber with such an utterly astonishing number of prohibited items.

The FDA encourages voluntary MAUDE reporting by healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers and consumers. One such submission (Report number MW5172645) also addressed this fatality. It identified both training courses the deceased had recently attended and included photographs of the chamber involved. Besides identifying its make and model, chamber images showed what appeared to be an attached and unauthorized FDA logo, something that may “constitute a violation of federal law”.

Dick Clare, President

National Board of Diving & Hyperbaric Medicine

DMT+Operator Course Handout