Low events per hour, do i need a CPAP?

Hi,

I have been on CPAP for a week now and on my data screen for the resmed airsense 10 at the end of the night sleep it says i had 0.4 or 0.0 events per hour.
1:Does that mean i had many apneas and only 0.4 per hour still happened
2:Does that mean only 0.4 per hour happened in total that the CPAP had to correct.

If i am having no apneas or very little apneas when i sleep does that means i don't need a CPAP.
Im a little confused.

It means you're being treated! Go off Cpap for 1-2 days and your numbers will go right back up again. That's the whole point of using Cpap! If your sleep study numbers (pre-therapy) were below 5, then you wouldn't have gone onto Cpap, but they obviously weren't, so....

Ransid wrote:1:Does that mean i had many apneas and only 0.4 per hour still happened

This is the correct choice of your 2 statements.
What you are seeing on the report is apnea events that got past the defenses and still occurred.
There is no way to know how many it actually prevented from happening.

What it means is the cpap machine is doing an excellent job of preventing apnea events.
You would have to refer back to a sleep study without using a machine at all to get an idea how many it might have prevented.
Example...my sleep study without cpap showed around 50 apnea events per hour happening but my machine reports less than 1.0 apnea events happening now....all it means is that 49 plus events per hour are prevented from happening.
It's a per hour average...in my case that means over 6 hours of sleep it prevented nearly 300 events.

Great information.

Thanks for helping me out.

Cheers.

Ransid wrote:at the end of the night sleep it says i had 0.4 or 0.0 events per hour.

That's cool! Good treatment ... if ...

... you are getting the smiley icon beside the leak button.

If you get a frownie for leaks, it means the mask has a high leak and the events data may not be correct.

Check the leak icon every morning for a smiley icon.

Ransid wrote:If i am having no apneas or very little apneas when i sleep does that means i don't need a CPAP.
Im a little confused.

your question is akin to putting on your glasses, and then saying "hey, I can see everything clearly, do I really need the glasses?" as has been mentioned, the numbers showing up are *after* the machine has helped you...

palerider wrote:your question is akin to putting on your glasses, and then saying "hey, I can see everything clearly, do I really need the glasses?"

Your reply is akin to putting on your sunglasses and then saying, "Hey, it's dark outside now, do I really need the sunglasses?"

I bet you do that a lot.

TheRapist wrote:

palerider wrote:your question is akin to putting on your glasses, and then saying "hey, I can see everything clearly, do I really need the glasses?"

Your reply is akin to putting on your sunglasses and then saying, "Hey, it's dark outside now, do I really need the sunglasses?"

I bet you do that a lot.

and yours is much the same WTFery as yours usually are.

As a totally newbie (just had my 2nd trial night on a CPAP) I wondered this exact same thing myself cause my AHI is down to only 2.2 on the first night.
I have read many forum posts where people who have been on their machines for ages and their scores are still quite high, so was confused as to how mine could drop low so quickly.
I'm still in slight denial about having sleep apnea and when in that phase one can delude themselves into all sorts of thoughts ..... like:
Perhaps I was just having a bad one off night on my sleep study test night....lol.

But the responses have set my mind straight. Cause I thought the machine would show up how many you actually have a night, even though it stops them. Makes more sense that it only counts the ones that actually happen.

BTW... why would it catch/stop most but let the odd ones through?
I have so much to learn!

G'day fellow Aussie!
Mine was 0.7 last night - hence I'm feeling great this morning! Pretty sure it wasn't 0.7 the night before my trial started!
Who knows why is works for some but not others - I guess just because it isn't perfect. For me, it probably worked for 99% of them - I'm pretty happy with anything under 3!
I've got over my denial - I'm just feeling like such a different person and getting so much more out of my days. I'm glad I found CPAP!!!

Shell_78 wrote:BTW... why would it catch/stop most but let the odd ones through?

Sometimes the machine just doesn't stop them all for any number of reasons.
If the apnea event flagged happens to be a central/clear airway apnea the regular cpap/apap/bilevel machines can't prevent those anyway no matter what the pressure.
If the apnea even flagged is OA/hyponea then maybe for some reason whatever pressure used just wasn't quite enough to hold the airway open. Maybe just more pressure was needed and the machine couldn't get it done for whatever reason. A couple of common reasons for needing more pressure sometimes and not other times is supine sleeping or REM stage sleep or maybe a combination of both.

Finally sometimes the machine gets "fooled" by awake/semi awake breathing irregularities (we call it SWJ for Sleep/Wake/Junk) and just flags something that isn't a real apnea. These machines can't really tell if we are asleep or not. They just measure air flow and often our awake/semi awake breathing is very irregular (and it's normal to be irregular) and the irregularity gets an apnea flag of some sort but it's not a "real" apnea. It's fairly common to get a central flag that is not "real" but it can happen with the other flags as well.

Even people who don't have enough apneas to earn the diagnosis can have an occasional apnea...it's rare (but not impossible) to not have some sort of apnea happen randomly. I can't count the number of nights I might have had just one lone apnea or hyponea or one central flag to mess up my "perfect" 0.0 AHI.

Thanks Pugsy - that's interesting and helpful

It's awesome to see another Aussie!

Thanks for all that info. That's fantastic.
I'm pretty happy with how fast it has come down, not that my score was anywhere near what a lot of people have when they are first diagnosed, but will be cool to see it drop even more.
I'm sitting on AHI 0.8.

I haven't had any leakage problems at all, but I'm struggling with getting comfortable. I can't just roll over and hug my pilllow the way I use to cause I find it wants to push the mask so it will cause a slight leak sound. So I'm still waking regularly - whenever I move, which is often. I guess that takes time.

There are pillows made for Cpap use - Google Cpappillow.com (they have cutouts for the masks).

Just remember, the AHI reported in the diagnosis is a baseline for recommending treatment;
and is presumed to be representative of an untreated night.
The AHI reported by the machine indicates effectiveness of treatment.
Low numbers are a very good thing.