AHI events while awake???

[cnew]

Last night I "hooked up" early and watched a video for approximately one hour before going to sleep. I was interested to see what would register on my report this morning. My machine reported clear airway apneas, hypopneas and obstructive apneas during the
hour before I went to sleep. What's up with that?

[avi123]

XPAPs can score a lot of events while you're awake but they all should be disregarded. For example, you can pinch the air hose and score an event, also by changing body body positions. Your machine does not know when you fall asleep. At the Sleep Clinic the Sleep Tech re-edits the results and delete those false events.

[Kody]

I've noticed these false AHI's as well. I'm looking at my Data everyday, still in the process of figuring it all out, so I wait until I know it will only be a few minutes before I fall asleep to mask up. This can be risky though, you don't want to fall asleep before you put the mask on. I also turn off the machine once I wake up and realize I'm not going to be going back to sleep to avoid bad data. Guess I'm overly particular about this at this point, however it's a lot better than having to do any complex mathematical calculations. When I first wake up that would be on the bottom of my "things I want to do today" list!

[pap4life]

Yes, your machine doesn't know when you are asleep, you might get some CRS events or centrals , but why would you get obstructive apneas when you are awake.?

[davelikesbeer]

I think a yawn could show up as an event. Also, some tend to hold their breath will rolling over.

[cindjo717]

Hi, I am new here and new to C-Pap therapy, just got my C-Pap on Thurs. I have the same machine as you do and don't know how to retrieve all the data that you show in your post. I can retrieve the basic stuff and can see my AHI's which I have an average of 10.5 I believe. Is that high? Also how do you retrieve all the other info, such as clear airway apneas, hypo et al. Thanks.

Last night I "hooked up" early and watched a video for approximately one hour before going to sleep. I was interested to see what would register on my report this morning. My machine reported clear airway apneas, hypopneas and obstructive apneas during the
hour before I went to sleep. What's up with that?

[Pugsy]

Hi, I am new here and new to C-Pap therapy, just got my C-Pap on Thurs. I have the same machine as you do and don't know how to retrieve all the data that you show in your post

Please add your own equipment to your profile so everyone can easily see at a glance what you use.
Here's how.
wiki/index.php/Registering_Equipment_in_User_Profile

PR System One users with full data capable machines have some software options. I have explained them here with some examples.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=64906&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... re+options

SleepyHead is quite nice and remarkably stable for being still a work in progress. There is even a Mac version.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sleepyhead/

Welcome to the forum. If you would like some more information about Encore Pro just send me a private message.

[cindjo717]

Thanks.

[Pugsy]

Thanks

You are welcome. I see you have the same machine as I have. Do you have the clinician/provider manual that tells you all the super secret stuff on your machine? If not, and you wish to have it ( If nothing else it has some excellent definitions for the terms you might see on the software reports.) just send me a private message with your private email address and I will send it to you as pdf attachment. We can't do attachments with the forum message system.

[cnew]

Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. My point is this: How can I trust that my machine is accurately detecting and measuring my various apneas while I am sleeping, when it is reporting these "false apneas" when I am awake?

[cnew]

XPAPs can score a lot of events while you're awake but they all should be disregarded. For example, you can pinch the air hose and score an event, also by changing body body positions. Your machine does not know when you fall asleep. At the Sleep Clinic the Sleep Tech re-edits the results and delete those false events.

Don't these things happen when we sleep, too?

[DaveLP]

On most machines, 10 seconds without initiating a breath cycle will log a hypopnea or clear airway event. Shallow breathing will do the same (50% or less volume than average). I catch myself forgetting to breath occasionally while drifting off to sleep. I seem to consciously acknowledge this just about the time I take an autonomic breath ordered by my brain when the CO2 levels rise.

CO2 levels play a part.

[Pugsy]

Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. My point is this: How can I trust that my machine is accurately detecting and measuring my various apneas while I am sleeping, when it is reporting these "false apneas" when I am awake?

If my AHI is acceptable overall even when including any possible false positives it doesn't really matter to me if a couple of scored events were scored in error. Usually if I am going to have any false positives it will be in the last hour of sleep when I am perhaps waking up and I know that I had multiple transitions from sleep to awake or semi awake. Easy to spot with some experience and knowledge that for that particular time period the data might not be totally accurate. I mentally toss that time frame out the window.

It is a limitation of the machines and we just have to accept it and live with it or else it will drive us crazy worrying about every possible variation in our numbers. We don't have the luxury of having a sleep tech in a chair beside us with EEG leads to our brains to see if we are asleep or not and toss those possible false positives out the window. Most of the time a few false positives (if there are any) aren't present in such numbers as to really impact and hourly index all that much. If you have a lot of awakenings throughout the night and thus possibly more sleep transition false positives...then the sleep awakenings are the problem and not any false positives.

Instead of dwelling on false positives chance of being scored, I choose to be thankful for the ability to see what we do see. It hasn't been that long ago patient's had no data available to them at all. It really is quite remarkable and this is all new technology and being refined all the time. I don't expect perfection. Close is good enough for me.
Some people close isn't good enough and they will worry a whole lot about something they have no control over.
A long time ago I decided it was useless to worry about something I had zero control over. Waste of time and energy.

Just my opinion. It is up to you how you wish to deal with the limitations that we have now. It isn't perfect but it is so much better than nothing.

[HoseCrusher]

I believe you can probably trust your machine to detect and report changes in air flow. Keep in mind that is only one data set.

If you add a pulse oximeter you can add 2 more channels of data, pulse rate and O2 saturation.

If you add a Fitbit you end up with another channel of data.

You can also add a camera to record you and end up with another channel of data.

All of these give you information on what is happening to you, but the gold standard to tell if you are awake or asleep is the EEG.

The sleep lab starts with brain waves and then reviews the other channels of data to see if they support what is going on in the brain.

When the only data you have is flow data from an xPAP machine, you are limited it what you can determine from that data. However, understanding all of these limitations, isn't it wonderful when you can strive to keep the flow events as low as possible, and feel much better in the process.

The equipment manufacturers have spent a lot of effort in trying to make sense of the flow data. They have come up with some pretty good algorithms, but you have to understand that their reports are based upon only 1 channel of data. As you have figured out, it is easy to corrupt the data, so that has to be taken into account when reviewing your data.

[cindjo717]

I have a question! I get itchy sometimes and have to take my mask off for a quick scratch. Should I shut the machine off before I take off my mask? Sometimes I just unclip one side and then just scratch my nose a bit and put it back on with the machine running. I wonder if this would cause the machine to read that as an ahi?