(08-18-2012, 05:43 PM)Moriarty Wrote: I don't have many CA's and I think most of them are wrongly tagged but, interestingly, a number of my 'genuine' CA's are after I have inhaled indicating that I am taking a breath then holding it in my sleep. Of course I didn't need the machine to tell me that - my wife has been saying it for years.....
Interesting. Well at least you are taking a full breath before it happens. I would say 95% of my CA's start by exhaling fully, then I inhale only 50% and stop. They generally last 45 seconds or more and then end with the completion of the original inhale to 100%. Then in a bad spell, it will repeat exactly the same pattern 5-10 times in a row with an occassional one lasting over a full minute.
In contrast, the OA's will sometimes start with a damped oscillation look - like a triangle of breathing with less and less depth until it stops for 30 seconds or more. It's amazing to see these waveforms come and go as the sleep levels change. They have a character of their own and stay in groups until an event occurs, maybe a new sleep level or sleeping position - and new groupings appear. Fasinating.
I'm trying to get used to high pressure. I intially had a phobia about breathing against the wind. So for practice, I took a nap this evening for 2 hours and ran the S9 in the CPAP mode at 18 cm/H20 just to see how I do. I was amazed! After about 10 minutes, it felt like I was breathing in zero gravity and didn't even notice the exhale resistance. It actually felt quite pleasant and I noticed the high pressure was forcing me to inhale better. I thought just maybe it would help the CA due to this, but I was wrong. When I awoke, I looked at the chart and it showed AHI=0 for 90 minutes as I tried to fall asleep marveling at the ease of braething. But as I fell asleep the CA's started up big time and my AHI rose to 79 over a 20 minute period. They were averaging about 30-40 seconds in duration.
I KNOW they were CA's cuz I was sleeping on my side (low OSA AHI mode) and as I drifted off I woke a few times and found I was not breathing. I felt no gagging or throat restriction whatsoever. This happened many times after I drifted off. Later, I looked at the chart and saw 32 CA events in a row. There were only 4 OSA's the whole 2 hour session. For what it's worth.
BTW, how does a hypopnea get labeled? I see them ocassionally, but can't understand why they were labeled where they are. There is no breathing stoppage, just a sharp slope in the middle of nowhere. I thought hypopnea was more like a triangle waveform where the breathing slowly increases in amplitude and then decreases over time into an apnea, no?
Tom