The Hyperbaric Technicians (H.T.), a professional category instituted by the School in 1973, in agreement with the Ministry of Health, find their occupational outlet within two sectors, its courses pursuing two specific lines:

	the first as hyperbaric backing to any kind of underwater work, executed both in low depth (bathymetry -50) and in high depth, as well as in breathing gases saturation;
	the second in hospital-outpatient sector, both public and private, in hyperbaric medicine services and first-aid interventions.

As to the first case, there is no underwater working activity which doesn't or mustn't imply hyperbaric assistance, in order to ensure physical safety for those exposed to embolism and for the functioning, technical assistance and service of hyperbaric installations, suitable for underwater operativeness up to bathymetry -600, with saturation methodology.

In this case T.D.O.'s (Technical Diver Operator's) underwater survival and activity totally depend from a qualified surface-staff of no less than 16/20 hyperbaric technicians, controlling the functioning of all the systems, of the instruments and technical services, the highly professional management of which only allows them to work in high bathymetry.

They are called chamber operators, diving supervisors, saturation assistants and are submitted to a detailed functional, sectorial and social security - hierarchy.

Those technician's main tasks are the ones ensuring:

	A constant and regular maintenance of partial pressures (Pp) of breathing gases in hyperbaric environment and of their percentage;
	The analysis of breathing and ambient gases, using mass-spectrometers and other suitable instruments;
	Constant and regular maintenance of temperature, humidity rate and anything connected with survival, hygiene and safety conditions within the hyperbaric microenvironment;
	Continuity of communications to and from surface/chamber/bell;
	Constant functional upkeep of all systems, technical and instrumental means;
	The "storage" of gases needed during the programmed permanence in hyperbaric conditions and in case of emergency, both of technical and pathologic nature;
	Sanitary control;
	Nutrition;
	"Comfort" and leisure, even as psychological support;
	Assembling the submersion-hyperbaric chamber (bell) to the stationary chamber on surface; submersion and rescue of the bell itself, as well as anything related both to the underwater work (on the bottom) as to the occupier's life;
	Various services;
	Proper intervention - mostly of psychological kind - to keep up a good atmosphere of coexistence in a confined ambient, considering human relations and the essential socialization;

It is therefore essential for these technicians to come from proper formative/informative courses, providing them with the adequate professional training needed in such a delicate job, full of responsibilities and risks for the physical health and for hyperbaric technicians themselves, ho must also be able to guarantee assistance within the hyperbaric chambers, with highly professional interventions. Only professionalism can guard their own and other people's safety.

Nel secondo caso è nota l’importanza che assume l’opera di un TecIn the second case, the importance of a professionally trained hyperbaric technician's job in the position to ensure technical and psychological assistance (inside and outside the hyperbaric chamber) to anyone being inside the latter, to warrant the regular operation and use of the installations and their accessories, the control of medium - and high - pressure gases, the accurate knowledge of all the particular aspects of hyperbaric medicine, the correct plotting of a Comp./Dec. graph and the application of precise preventative protocols of accident prevention, is well known.

We also know the importance of hyperbaric medicine, to be used not only in case of diver's embolism, as commonly known, but also for the treatment of many other pathologies, for some of which the lack of resort to hyperbaric oxygen-therapy (HbO) would be a gross medical negligence

After the School's first four courses in 1977, supported by the same Ministry which had demonstrated the indispensability of hyperbaric praesidiums at hospitals and the equal indispensability of hyperbaric technicians, comparable to respiratory physiology - technicians, the Ministry of Health, General Management of Hospitals, with a circular of its own, and the General Management of Social Medicine with proper notes, awakened the Councillors of Italian Regional Authorities to promote those technician's formation and professional training.

The first to perceive those spurs was Lazio Region, realizing in 1977 and 1978 the vocational training courses, at the end of which every qualified technician has found a regular job at the Institute of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care of the Medicine branch of "La Sapienza" University /Rome/Policlinico Umberto I.

In 1982/84 Sardinia Region also organized some courses for hyperbaric technicians, allowing the institution of the Hyperbaric First Aid Praesidium at Marino Hospital in Cagliari and fostering employment of almost all the qualified students.

The specific course, for this category of technicians, has a particular social - you could almost say moral-political - meaning , mainly because it tends to satisfy a big amount of qualified situations wanted, promoting the creation of a "plafond" of hyperbaric technicians and laying the foundations and creating the instruments for the realization of new technological and scientific structures in defence of human safety, in a wide range of working activities at high-risk-incidence.

Among the many cases of "risky" jobs, we can't ignore prevention with the help of hyperbaric oxygen, of intoxication of workers who, during particular operation schedules of their working activities, are directly exposed to nitrates, nitrites, nitrobenzene, nitrotolueni , a.s.o., used for the production of paint, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products in the wide spectrum of chemical industry's production.

In the future and progressive institution of hyperbaric medicine centers, with consequent occupational outlet for its technicians, the School sees one of its principal social goals, receiving at the same time a great moral gratification for the boost it has given and is still giving to hyperbaric medicine's success, all the more so as the School itself has, as well known, been creator of this specific category of technicians, as it had been for the Technical Diver Operators in 1959.

According to a compatibility between productive growth and social security, the forming of technical-scientific boards in the hyperbaric branch allows to look confidently and positively at the relations with other Countries members of the European Union (EU), not only in terms of greater and wider socioeconomic opportunities, but also in those of an occupation at last conciliating economic development and social security within the whole European Economic Community (EEC).

Filling in those gaps will be a precious contribution to Progress, Safety and Employment.