What does "CA" Clear airway apnea mean?

I mean the CA clear apnea events that are shown in SLeepy HEad?
what does it mean, are they bad?

A CA event is when your airway is open, but you're not breathing. There could be a neurological cause, meaning that CAs should have shown up in your sleep study, and you you have central apnea. For others, it appears that the use of CPAP can cause CAs, and you would have complex apnea. The latter was the case with me. I had to bet a BiPAP machine to solve my CAs.

I'm sure many others on this board can explain it much better, as well as go into much more details, but I'm able to give at least a brief overview.

I'm pretty sure what I said is accurate. If not, anyone please feel free to correct anything I said.

In fact, having a few CA's when drifting off the sleep or just before waking does NOT necessarily mean you 'have' central apnea at all... it's more common than not to have those few show up at those times. It's only if you have many of them throughout the night, or clustered at some point overnight that you'd question 'having' it. Clear airway and central apnea are interchangeable - just semantics, tho' 'a' clear airway (or 'a' central) is used more often if referring to one event, whereas central apnea refers to the condition.

Central apnea

For whatever reason, I found my CA events went way up when in the CFLEX+ or AFLEX mode on my Respironics. I am back to CPAP with just a relief of 1. CA's are few and far between now. I planned to stay with this setting a few more days then go back to CFLEX+ just to see if it repeats.
I see you have a Respironics machine based on your humidifier but not sure what model you are using.

sleepstar wrote:Central apnea

In fact, it does NOT mean "Central Apnea" .. Instead it simply means Clear Airway apnea.

Since we are not hooked up to record / diagnose EEG readings, it is impossible to tell if the CA (for Clear Airway) apnea is due to waking / falling asleep or is an actual apnea. And that's a very important distinction. Since central apnea events are both normal and not counted when we fall asleep and awaken, they are not counted - unless the duration and frequency during the sleep state transition severely impacts sleep.

Sorry. I meant equivalent of central apnea. Not that CA stands for central apnea.

You mention central apneas are not counted when we fall asleep or wake up. They actually are counted when falling asleep or waking up. There's no rule that they aren't counted.

SHOULD I WORRY?


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Probably not. Your AHI score is below 5.0 and the CA events are even lower. This is considered "normal".

I wish mine had looked that good. I was having anywhere from 20 to almost 80 a night.