georgiegirl12 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:47 pm
Reading about your father's problems leads me to wonder if his machine is enabled with auto-on and auto-off. If so, this may cause the machine to stop and restart keeping your father awake. My machine has those 2 fields turned to OFF. I have to physically turn the cpap on and off when I need to take off the mask.
I was reading about those settings, I currently have it set so that it will turn on Automatically when he starts breathing in the mask but I was worried that a large leak might make the machine think it had been turned off so I disabled the auto off feature so that you have to hit the button when you take it off.
georgiegirl12 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:47 pm
I also agree that your father would benefit greatly from an in-lab sleep study with a like-kind cpap machine while the Technician titrates the air pressure until his different issues are much better controlled or resolved. Then the cpap machine will be set for him to ramp up to the desired pressure.
He had an in lab titration sleep study but it was only on cpap/bilevel methodologies. So he does have a perscription at the level they thought he did best at. Unfortunately, it looks like on that study with those pressures from 5 to 10 where he got to rem sleep for 6 minutes and he didn't have any centrals during that stretch, it looks like there were still plenty of Obstructive events. Then they started try higher and bi level pressures which he didn't do so well on.
While he is on his side, he doesn't have many OA events but that isn't very useful with a Cpap machine since it doesn't do anything for the centrals and as far as I can tell the lower pressures are not really working on the Obstructive events.
Basically the Dr thinks they have to go with the cpap first (just in case it works and they don't need to bother with the rest of it) before they will schedule a test check his heart to make sure he is safe for an ASV titration study. I couldn't really get an answer out of him about how long we need to be going on with the cpap before it is decided if it is or isn't working. Basically we have to get the leaks under control and then get probably a week of data without much large leaks before he will consider anything.
Here is a look at last night, zoomed in on the early part of the night after he went to sleep on his side. He normally falls to sleep really fast so probably only a few of those centrals are still awake.
Here is a longer stretch without large leaks where he was on his back.
He really didn't sleep that well last night, was up several times but he was able to put his socks and shoes on this morning on his own as well as use the toilet independently so at least better than a couple of the days last week.
At this point we are definitely not seeing any overall improvement on the baseline we can achieve simply with positional therapy.
Daughter Posting on behalf of my 81 year old Father with Parkinson's and Dementia (Dementia, I believe was brought on by the sleep disorder.)