Tolerance to explosive decompression of albino rats in a ‘fetal’ posture

¹ U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine, Pensacola, Florida

The survival rate of male albino rats explosively decompressed in the ‘fetal’ posture is markedly improved over animals having normal prone posture. The fetal posture was obtained by forcing the animals to curl up in a gauze cylinder as a piston was lowered. Decompressions were obtained by puncturing a diaphragm between a small parasite chamber and an evacuated low pressure chamber. The decompressions ranged from sea level to pressure equivalents up to 90,000 feet in about 0.01 second. The experiments indicate that pulmonary damage in explosive decompression is probably due to lack of support of the thoracic viscera on the diaphragmatic surface.