RE: Hi, newbie here.
Hi Eclipse,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Hang in there for more responses to your post and best of luck to you.
trish6hundred
RE: Hi, newbie here.
You have zoomed into that one event so that its details are quite clear. As Shastzi has indicated, this is pretty clearly an apnea event. You stop breathing (one assumes), your blood oxygen drops, your heart rate increases as a result, and then you obviously start breathing again and the levels return to normal.
Your blood oxygen level appears to be quite good, except during that event. Your sleeping heart rate seems to be a reasonably consistent ~70-75. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "all over the place".
If this is the only event in your entire evening of sleep, you have an AHI of less than 5 (actually less than 1), which is in the normal range. On the other hand, if you are having these constantly through your sleep period, you should figure out a rough hourly average for the events. A value of 5-15 per hour is classified as "mild", a value of 15-30 is classified as "moderate", and a value of 30+ events per hour is classified as "severe". If it's moderate and especially if it's severe, get thee to a sleep doctor immediately.
06-27-2013, 06:15 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-27-2013, 06:15 PM by Paptillian.)
RE: Hi, newbie here.
Could it be an arrhythmia or a palpitation? Interesting that the change in heart rate seems to lead the dip in oxygen, not the other way around. That could be a sensor / measurement issue, too.
Is it common in apnea events that oxygen levels can dip and recover by over 15 percentage points in just a matter of seconds?
Echo what others said; see a doctor.
RE: Hi, newbie here.
That depends on where you place the start of the change in heart rate. That initial ramp-up also fits within the range of fluctuations seen elsewhere. To my mind, the telling point is that the recovery in SpO2 clearly leads the recovery of heart rate. It also doesn't look like a sensor glitch, since the SpO2 and heart rate readings both react, and they both react with a phase difference (time lag). A sensor glitch would have both readings reacting at exactly the same time.
I do agree that the SpO2 drop was surprisingly instantaneous. However, if you zoom into the screen shot, you will see that both graphs in the short period before the drop appear in a different colour. I wonder if there was a sensor glitch, possibly an arrhythmia, at the start of the event which put the graphs into "repeat last reading" mode.