What's the maximum number of apnea events?

I was reading a post from someone who used to experience 100 events per hour. And it made me wonder just how many events one can experience in an hour.

I only ask because I forgot to put my data card in the machine last night and my mind has nothing to entertain it today

Theoretically, you could experience an apnea with every breath. So, how many breaths do you take in an hour?

Having been diagnosed with severe OSA with 119 events per hour, I thought that was very high indeed, some lasting for up to 62 seconds. I have seen posts of people with apneas lasting up to 3 minutes but that I would expect to be at the upper end of the time duration. For it to be considered an apnea event it has to last more than 10 seconds, so with 3600 seconds per hour the number could never be more than 360 but that would still leave no time for breathing.

I would assume that one needs to breath at least half the time to actually stay alive so I would think that around 150 or so would be the upper limit, but the duration of the events would also play a part in this. I do know that with a number of 119 when diagnosed I was very concerned to say the least.

tschultz wrote:around 150 or so would be the upper limit

The math makes sense.

tschultz wrote:but the duration of the events would also play a part in this

Perhaps not in calculating the maximum possible number of events. But duration has got to be important in assessing the severity of someone's apnea. Experiencing 50 episodes per hour, each lasting 10 seconds, sounds very different to my, admittedly, uneducated ears from experiencing 50 episodes per hour, each lasting 30 seconds. If that's the case, why so much emphasis on AHI and none on the event duration?

An event has to be 10 seconds to qualify as an event right? So if you have 5 seconds to take a breath and exhale followed by an event every single time just do the math, my mask was leaking last night so I cant right now, lol.

My AHI during sleep study was 118, which to me sounded astronomical. I was just coming off a serious head cold and that could have produced a higher AHI?

TooGroggy wrote: If that's the case, why so much emphasis on AHI and none on the event duration?

I don't think we should put any emphais on the AHI, the RDI, or the duration of apneas in our PSGs.

Our PSGs showed we had sleep apnea. Now forget about the PSG and put the emphasis on running an excellent CPAP therapy.

I know that the short time I've been on CPAP/APAP trying to optimize the settings I found that the numbers only told part of the picture. This was something I communicated to both the RRT at my DME as well as the sleep clinic where my sleep doctor works. Since they have agreed to use the settings I have arrived at making my own changes, my thinking could not have been flawed.

I had pretty good numbers at a pressure of 16 with EPR OFF, but did not feel like I slept well. When I looked at the data things were OK until I started to look at the actual detailed data and looked at the correlation with snoring, flow limitation, and how clustered the apnea events were. Turning EPR ON and increasing the pressure improved the numbers a bit but more importantly I felt like I slept good, snoring was further reduced and the apnea events were not clustered together. I'm guessing that with the apnea events clustered together my oxygen levels would have dropped more than when they are not so close together, and with the EPR ON the breathing is more natural with I think also impacts things at least for me.

So for me the way the detailed data looked, the duration and clustering of the apnea events, as well as the numbers all played a part in my decisions when making changes to my settings. By doing this I was able to optimize my treatment better than just sticking with what had been prescribed.

I do think I would prefer to see 5 apnea events each lasting 15 seconds spread out over an hour more than a single event lasting 75 seconds even though the numbers would look better for the single event. The single event would most likely result in a significant drop on oxygen compared to the shorter events. Although more complicated to calculate I believe the numbers should done where events are scored or weighted taking several factors into consideration, not just how many happen per hour.