self titration

[shadowfx78]

Is in home self titration more effective than a second sleep lab study? If so i may talk to my doctor about not doing the study and just enabling my APAP and setting a range.

[RogerSC]

You did say that you have an apap, so I'm assuming that means that your sleep study showed at least mostly OSA's. Self-titration did work for me, and you could try that, but you'll need to be able to figure out from your sleep data (chances are) when you arrive at a good range for your apnea. Learning to interpret sleep data usually takes some time and help. For me, I doubt that what I would have ended up with from a titration study at the lab would have been useful anyways, since I had so much trouble getting much sleep there.

I initially used the guess that my sleep doctor made for a pressure range on my AutoSet, and then when I could I tuned it in so that I was getting better results. He didn't start with a wide open range, which was helpful, since that can be a problem. Started at 6-10cm and that got my AHI down to about 1.5 on average, and am now at 11-15cm, which has gotten the average down to just under 1. So the initial range was pretty good.

At any rate, yes, I think that you can self-titrate assuming that you can interpret your sleep data or get help doing that. You may run into some problems that you can talk over with your sleep doctor, as well as here. And there are people on this forum that can help you interpret your sleep data that have done that a lot.

[shadowfx78]

There are two reasons I am asking about this, the first is i have a titration test on the 11th that im thinking of cancelling and doing it myself with sleepyhead. the second is my events haven't decreased since starting cpap i mean its only been 4 days but still would have expected some sort of decrease. My CPAP pressure is set at 8 and doesn't seem to be doing much. so I'm going to switch to APAP with a range of 6 to 18 for a few weeks and see where the pressure evens out at.

[WindCpap]

How did you get a CPAP prescription without a titration? Was it so you could get used to the machine and improve your titatration results? If that is the case, your pressure is probably set intentionally a little low.

If I was you, I would suck it up, and do the titration in the lab. They have access to a lot more information in the lab that you/your machine can only guess at. You only need to get in a couple of sleep cycles for them to get it right, and you can take a sleeping pill if you think it will help.

I really didn't like my titration, but they got the pressure right on the money, and now my sleep apnea is effectively cured (treated, but cured as long as I keep using the CPAP).

[chunkyfrog]

My lab titration was 14, and I endured that until I got my first Autoset.
My pressures since then are usually in the low to mid 11's, rarely going above 12.
Yes the lab was "a bit off".