Do I still need CPAP?

[John1409]

My Sleephead AHI for the past week is 0.16, 0.61 for last 30 days, and 1.17 for past year.
My events lately are H and RE events occurring several minutes after a pressure increase.
I had concha bullosa nose surgery on 2/4/19 and am breathing the best in years. I've had a deviated septum for years. I do not wake up tired or feel I have any sleep apnea symptoms.
I started CPAP on 9/24/17 following an in-lab sleep study. I had a left hip replacement planned for 10/24/17 and knew that I would no longer be able to sleep on my left side while recovering from that surgery. I had slept on my left side for years due to my aforementioned deviated septum. I attempted to sleep on my back in my sleep study, replicating my status after hip surgery. I think the lab tech felt sorry for me after several hours and gave me a Simplus full face and I was then able to sleep.
The question then is can I play with the pressures on my Autoset 10 and see what happens? Any recommendations? It is strange to me that nearly all events occur several minutes after a pressure increase.
Do I need a followup sleep study or in-home?
My next appt with my sleep doc isn't until October.

[nicholasjh1]

My Sleephead AHI for the past week is 0.16, 0.61 for last 30 days, and 1.17 for past year.
My events lately are H and RE events occurring several minutes after a pressure increase.
I had concha bullosa nose surgery on 2/4/19 and am breathing the best in years. I've had a deviated septum for years. I do not wake up tired or feel I have any sleep apnea symptoms.
I started CPAP on 9/24/17 following an in-lab sleep study. I had a left hip replacement planned for 10/24/17 and knew that I would no longer be able to sleep on my left side while recovering from that surgery. I had slept on my left side for years due to my aforementioned deviated septum. I attempted to sleep on my back in my sleep study, replicating my status after hip surgery. I think the lab tech felt sorry for me after several hours and gave me a Simplus full face and I was then able to sleep.
The question then is can I play with the pressures on my Autoset 10 and see what happens? Any recommendations? It is strange to me that nearly all events occur several minutes after a pressure increase.
Do I need a followup sleep study or in-home?
My next appt with my sleep doc isn't until October.

You'd probably need to post a sleepy head for any deep analysis, but if the pressure is raising I'm guessing you need it. the pressure raising and then having apnea's suggest it's detecting snoring which is usually an indicator of an incipient apnea particularyly in apniacs.

[ChicagoGranny]

Do I need a followup sleep study or in-home?

Neither. Just start using Sleepyhead software and post some a typical night's chart for discussion in this thread. See Pugsy's Sleepyhead tutorial near the top of the index page.

[John1409]

2 days sleephead.
Hope this worked.

[Julie]

The point is - you're using TREATED (with Cpap) AHI figs to decide to maybe quit, but if you did not use it, your numbers would go way up again. Only a new test can prove you no longer need therapy.

[Wulfman...]

You shouldn't need another sleep study........you're getting one EVERY NIGHT with your machine.
And, I would say that you still need to use your machine.

I've had MANY nights with very low numbers.....including many 0.0s. All it means is that's your "treated" numbers.


Den

.

[kteague]

Since there are a few events that still slip past the machine's defenses I would guess there are quite a few it prevents. If you are so inclined, you could lower your starting pressure and see if your AHI goes up. My money is on it going up when there is less pressure to prevent events. Would you be able to accept that as evidence you still need treatment? However, that would probably make for a miserable night. Depends on how curious you are and if you are one who needs some degree of evidence. If your starting pressure was at its lowest of 4 and your AHI was still near zero, then I might think a new test is merited, but even at that, it's not conclusive because even the lowest pressure provides some support. In my mind I don't see going through all that necessary. If my old eyes aren't failing me, it looks like you have a starting pressure of 10. I think that's a significant pressure and very likely to be preventing events. How many and how serious - that's anybody's guess.

[palerider]

It is strange to me that nearly all events occur several minutes after a pressure increase.

The only reason that pressure increases is because you had some sort of breathing problem.

Close examination will reveal that you had breathing problems, maybe not to the extent of a flagged event, *before* the pressure went up, and it's likely that the pressure just didn't go up far enough to prevent it.

[ChicagoGranny]

The question then is can I play with the pressures on my Autoset 10 and see what happens? Any recommendations?

Now that more is known about your CPAP therapy, my recommendation is to lower your minimum pressure to 8.0 and see what happens. The objective would be to see if the machine raises the pressure significantly. This would be an indication that it sensed your airway was partially collapsing.

After seeing a graph of that night, I might want to try a night at 6.0 minimum pressure. I wouldn't want to go straight away to 6.0 because it might end up a bad night for you due to the minimum pressure being too low.

[palerider]

Conversely, I'd recommend increasing min pressure to 10, in order to smooth out the pressure line and prevent more breathing events from happening.