CPAPtalk.com

Progress!

So, got a new cushion for my old full face mask, a script for prednisone which has help completely clear up my sinuses, concientitious side sleeping, and cervical collar and voila!



Sure, very small sample but promising nevertheless.

Happy dance time.....
Good job.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:27 am

Happy dance time.....
Good job.

Yess. Thanks for all the advice. Now here's something I have a question about since my VSs were super high. Is it possible that a blowing fan could screw up the machine detection of AHI? Just want to make sure that this wasn't a fluke. Last night was the first night in a long time I had a fan blowing. It wasn't exactly next to me and was oscillating but I was always curious if this could somehow throw off the machine.

No way that I can think of. I pretty much use a fan all summer long and I have never seen any of my data change beyond normal nightly variations.

So after a few days of very good AHI numbers, skyrocketed back up. Going to talk to my NP as it coincided with the end of my Prednisone dose. Wondering if that was helping my airway stay clear.

So had a session where my AHI jumped after turning up min pressure to 16. Still doing side sleeping and cervical collar. Funny thing is I thought I had a great night sleep because I feel halfway decent for once.



My VS disappeared which makes sense because I've been noticing snoring while sleeping. Any chance these flags are wrong? I'm going to try and power cycle my machine to see if that makes any difference. No idea what's going on.

I frequently have elevated hypopnea counts. Fortunately with SleepyHead you can zoom in and look at each event on a breath by breath basis.

I took some of my data and had a pulmonologist and a polysomnography specialist review it. They didn't feel that all of the hypopnea's were real based upon my data.

As a work around I subtract the number of hypopnea events from the total count and come up with an apnea + clear airway + RERA index for the night.

I am still pondering why the extra hypopnea's are being indicated but in reviewing the data from others it seems to be somewhat common.

The overall objective is to not have them show up. When I figure out how to do that I will let you know.

Did they say why they did not feel the hypopnea were "real"? Was he feeling that you had woken and thus they were not countable or what?

They looked at the 10 - 30 seconds prior to the hypopnea and suggested that it appeared that I go through periods of shallow followed by deeper breaths. They also mentioned arousal patterns.

My description of sleep starts off with a vision of ballroom dancing. My wife and I "dance" across the bed all night and drift into REM sleep during the bows... Children, cats, and dogs sleep at the foot of the bed to keep from getting run over.

My biggest challenge with this is leaks. I wear my mask loose for comfort. During all the waltz's, spins, two steps, hip hop's, tango's, and quick steps, I end up knocking my mask around and incur leaks.

Somehow the equipment survives and I wake up rested and ready to great the day.

HoseCrusher wrote: ↑

Wed May 02, 2018 12:00 pm

They looked at the 10 - 30 seconds prior to the hypopnea and suggested that it appeared that I go through periods of shallow followed by deeper breaths. They also mentioned arousal patterns.

My description of sleep starts off with a vision of ballroom dancing. My wife and I "dance" across the bed all night and drift into REM sleep during the bows... Children, cats, and dogs sleep at the foot of the bed to keep from getting run over.

My biggest challenge with this is leaks. I wear my mask loose for comfort. During all the waltz's, spins, two steps, hip hop's, tango's, and quick steps, I end up knocking my mask around and incur leaks.

Somehow the equipment survives and I wake up rested and ready to great the day.

That's what I kind of thought. Your method of subtracting th hypopnea may make you feel better from a numbers standpoint but it's not helping you get optimal results from your xPAP therapy. Here is why.Some of the hypopneas may be real some may be due to arousals. Subtracting all of them understates the case.Also, if you are going to subtract the possible arousals related events, you will need to subtract off some if not all of the centrals, because in most people these are arousal caused events, what is called SWJ here. RERA also may be real or just junk from arousal states, so they probably should not be counted, unless they are real restrictions. in other words, if you want to look at the waveforms for every event every night you might be able to better estimate your true AHI, but arbitrarily eliminating all of one type of machine identified event is not the way to get at truer AHI values. Most people just work to minimize all events, then go by how rested they feel during the day.

I put more emphasis on how I feel than what the numbers report.

I get up in the morning and ask myself if I am rested and ready to great the day. I then start my morning duties and go on from there. Later in the afternoon I download the data and see what the machine is indicating.

If I feel great and the machine is indicating an AHI of 30 something, I question the machine scoring. If I feel like crap and the machine scores an AHI of 0.1, I pause and try to figure out what the machine missed, or what else is going on in my life.

My goal is to have the machine not score any events. However I also understand the reality of life.