DATELINE: 30th November 2000
BENDS VICTIM DIED AFTER FLIGHT HOME
A diver who flew home from Turkey after becoming bent on a holiday dive collapsed and died as his plane touched down at Bristol Airport.
The coroner for Avon heard how 33-year-old Jason Valentine, from Plymouth, developed a rash, severe vomiting and bad leg cramps after a dive at Gumbet, near Bodrum.
A Turkish doctor who examined him mistook his symptoms for other ailments and cleared him to fly when he should have been admitted to one of Bodrum's two recompression chambers.
Noting that the doctor had merely prescribed a selection of useless drugs and creams, the coroner said: "It was a blatant misdiagnosis."
Referring to Valentine's bends-inducing dive, a police diving expert stated his view that the diver, who held basic certificates of competence from dives on other holidays but had not completed more comprehensive dive training, should not have been allowed to go on what had been a "deep dive".
A verdict of accidental death was recorded.

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