Question for those with Auto PAPs

[MikeManess]

I'm newly diagnosed with sleep apnea. I had a home sleep study, and the doctor said I had mild sleep apnea. I was given a prescription for an auto pap with a setting range of between 5 and 12. The doctor told me at the time that I would probably never see 12, but it's a standard range and they'll dial it in later. I received my APAP from the DME (Apria) Friday afternoon, and I got to try it this past weekend.

I went to sleep that night and woke up around 4am with the facemask all but hovering over my face. I looked at the setting and sat it was at 12. And every night since then, it goes up to 12.

The worst part is it never seems to come off of 12. I actually laid in bed Sunday morning, with the thing trying to blow me up like a balloon, and played a few rounds of a game I have on my cell phone - waiting for the auto pap to decide to decrease the pressure. It never did. So I'm wide awake, lying in bed playing a game, and the pressure never drops?

I took it back to Apria, who looked at the data on the SD card. The guy there said he couldn't tell a whole lot about it, other than the change appears to be very abrupt. He also said he called technical support and they said it could take 30 minutes or more for the pressure to drop after I wake up.

This doesn't sound right to me, even though I'm very new to this. I though the auto paps measured on a breath-by-breath basis and adjusted accordingly. This thing jumps right up to 12 and never drops.

The good part is that Apria is ordering me a new one, and I've gone in and manually adjusted the highest pressure to 9 .. just so I can get some sleep. The new unit will be arriving in a couple of days, when I'll do a swap out.

Has anyone heard anything like this for an APAP?

[SleepWellCPAP]

In your case I would suggest hitting the ramp button. Just to the lower right of the big dial below the LCD screen. This should take the pressure to the lower end of the spread so that your machine will start "hunting and pecking" for the correct pressure with a pressure easier for you to deal with.

Good luck!

[Pugsy]

Which S9 APAP did you get? The Escape Auto or the AutoSet?
The machine doesn't go up or down in pressure in the blink of an eye on a breath by breath analysis like people think they should. If it goes up and stays up then there is usually some sort of reason. Responses of both increasing and decreasing takes a little bit of time

SleepyHead software or ResScan will show more details so that you can evaluate what is going on.
I suggest that you give one or both a try to see what the machine might have been thinking it needed those higher pressures for. Normally it isn't a machine issue causing the runaway pressures but usually something else.

So get the software and post an image of the detailed report so that we can see what the pressure line is doing.
Links for SleepyHead are in my signature line. Send me a private message if you want ResScan. ResScan is Windows only though so if you have a Mac then you need SleepyHead.
Don't know how to post an image of your report so we can see what is going on? We talk about it in this thread.
Screen shot thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81072&p=737779#p737779
There's also some examples in there.

[nelamvr6]

I'm newly diagnosed with sleep apnea. I had a home sleep study, and the doctor said I had mild sleep apnea. I was given a prescription for an auto pap with a setting range of between 5 and 12. The doctor told me at the time that I would probably never see 12, but it's a standard range and they'll dial it in later. I received my APAP from the DME (Apria) Friday afternoon, and I got to try it this past weekend.

I went to sleep that night and woke up around 4am with the facemask all but hovering over my face. I looked at the setting and sat it was at 12. And every night since then, it goes up to 12.

The worst part is it never seems to come off of 12. I actually laid in bed Sunday morning, with the thing trying to blow me up like a balloon, and played a few rounds of a game I have on my cell phone - waiting for the auto pap to decide to decrease the pressure. It never did. So I'm wide awake, lying in bed playing a game, and the pressure never drops?

I took it back to Apria, who looked at the data on the SD card. The guy there said he couldn't tell a whole lot about it, other than the change appears to be very abrupt. He also said he called technical support and they said it could take 30 minutes or more for the pressure to drop after I wake up.

This doesn't sound right to me, even though I'm very new to this. I though the auto paps measured on a breath-by-breath basis and adjusted accordingly. This thing jumps right up to 12 and never drops.

The good part is that Apria is ordering me a new one, and I've gone in and manually adjusted the highest pressure to 9 .. just so I can get some sleep. The new unit will be arriving in a couple of days, when I'll do a swap out.

Has anyone heard anything like this for an APAP?

The machine in your sig looks like a PRS System One, not an S9. Which is correct? If it's a PRS Syetem One the mode may not be set to "Auto". This setting is found in the therapist's setup menu.

[Janknitz]

The technician was correct that it can take a long time for the APAP pressure to go back down. If you are awake and want the pressure to go down, as Pugsy said, hit the ramp button (I like to hang out with my machine, on, believe it or not. I love waking slowly and comfortably instead of jerking awake and out of bed).

You might want to call your doctor and tell him that you keep waking up at 12--it's an indicator that you might need more pressure, or perhaps a narrower range. The reason it was going to 12 must be because it was needed, so lowering the pressure may not be a good idea for your apnea. You can find the free Sleepyhead software and download your data. If you can figure out how to do that and post it, we can possibly see what's happening.

I like your doctor's conservative approach to titration. He does not have you set 4 to 20 which is very difficult because the machine ends up going higher than necessary to chase the apneas. With the smaller range set on your machine, that's less likely to happen, but the range may need to be a bit higher for you.

[Sheriff Buford]

Howdy fellow Texan (tippin' my hat)! Autopaps will act that way. They ease up close to the 90 percentile and hang around. You might consider the cpap mode, dial in the pressure that is the 90 percentile, and see if you can adjust to that. Cpap therapy can take some getting used to. It won't be long before you'll get used to the pressure changes. Watch out for Apria, once they get their money, they won't answer the phone!

Sheriff