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[Diagnosis] Home vs lab for sleep study
#1
Home vs lab for sleep study
My Sleep Dr had me do a home study rather than the lab study. It caught 80 incidents over 8 hrs giving me an AHI of 10, but here's the thing - I was only actually asleep for the last 5 hours - blinky lights and wires kept me fully awake for 3+ -- and the analysis said that all of the events were in the last half of the night along with "other incidents indicative of Sleep Disordered Breathing" and they gave me a diagnosis of moderate sleep apnea based on that rather than mild based on an AHI of 10.

If the home study can't even tell if you are sleeping or not, (and they don't ask) how can it really be a good diagnostic tool?
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#2
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
For most people home study is all they need
Sleep lab is preferable for people with more than just run the mill OSA

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#3
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
If you actually only slept 4 hours and had 80 incidents, your AHI would be 20. Perhaps that's why you were diagnosed as having moderate sleep apnea rather than mild.

BTW, I would much prefer to have had a home sleep test as opposed to the sleep lab that I was subjected to.
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#4
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
I was diagnosed with a home study. But you have a point in that my wife had one and came up with a ahi 4.9. Due to not sleeping most of the night and only napping briefly when she slept at all.

Though I know from living with her every night not on a cpap machine is a nightmare. Stopping breathing, chest heaving as she struggles to breath, bolt upright time after time when her body finally would jolt her to breath. Hers is as bad as mine or worse.
However with the home test stuff on her she barely napped lightly so she didnt do what she normally does.

Sleep lab was a bust also. She couldnt sleep there either.

So her GP wrote a script and we started self treating her. No insurance coverage like that but what can ya do?

Home test worked fine for me but I could sleep with it and in the titration lab so insurance covers me.
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#5
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
(11-15-2014, 02:41 AM)Ghost1958 Wrote: I was diagnosed with a home study. But you have a point in that my wife had one and came up with a ahi 4.9. Due to not sleeping most of the night and only napping briefly when she slept at all.

Though I know from living with her every night not on a cpap machine is a nightmare. Stopping breathing, chest heaving as she struggles to breath, bolt upright time after time when her body finally would jolt her to breath. Hers is as bad as mine or worse.
However with the home test stuff on her she barely napped lightly so she didnt do what she normally does.

Sleep lab was a bust also. She couldnt sleep there either.

So her GP wrote a script and we started self treating her. No insurance coverage like that but what can ya do?

Home test worked fine for me but I could sleep with it and in the titration lab so insurance covers me.

Did they offer sleeping pills to get a better study??? they did with me, but regretfully I turned em down. (I say regretfully, because if I gotta suffer with a cpap to get better, I need as big a number as they can give me for vindication Big Grin)
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#6
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
(11-14-2014, 08:53 PM)surferdude2 Wrote: If you actually only slept 4 hours and had 80 incidents, your AHI would be 20. Perhaps that's why you were diagnosed as having moderate sleep apnea rather than mild.

BTW, I would much prefer to have had a home sleep test as opposed to the sleep lab that I was subjected to.

yes, exactly.

I am just happy they caught it clearly, in the end. I am on my first week of treatment and I know for sure now that I had apnea forever. Can't wait until my body feels like it's caught up... seems to be a little later every day that I feel like I just want to go back to sleep.
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#7
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
I generally don't like the "pills" for the studies, they are known for producing false positives.
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#8
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
Sleeping pills bugger up a large part of the data so are to be avoided.

Daria,
The reason they can tell you are asleep is twofold: the distribution of events indicate the state of sleep, and the heart monitor tracings. So they don't really need to ask you. The chart makes it pretty easy to tell in most cases. From what you described, yes, you would be in the greater than mild category, so they did set you up correctly. A sleep lab as a follow up would only be necessary if the results were either inconclusive or indicated other than straight forward OSA or could not provide a clear titration guideline.
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#9
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
(11-15-2014, 07:48 PM)DocWils Wrote: Sleeping pills bugger up a large part of the data so are to be avoided.

Daria,
The reason they can tell you are asleep is twofold: the distribution of events indicate the state of sleep, and the heart monitor tracings. So they don't really need to ask you. The chart makes it pretty easy to tell in most cases. From what you described, yes, you would be in the greater than mild category, so they did set you up correctly. A sleep lab as a follow up would only be necessary if the results were either inconclusive or indicated other than straight forward OSA or could not provide a clear titration guideline.

Yes, they did diagnose moderate apnea, but they left the AHI at 10, and I suspect it should be 20 or more if I had actually slept. I am so new with this that I have not even been back to the Doctor since getting the home study ordered... they did a "fast-track" where my PCP sent me to be evaluated, the evaluating sleep dr ordered a home study and based on its results an auto cpap, which was issued in aa "class" of 6 and not a personal sort of thing at all. I don't go talk to the sleep doc again until mid Dec. so I haven't really talked to anyone. I am a datagirl, so I am starving over here, and making stuff up Wink
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#10
RE: Home vs lab for sleep study
I would imagine they lowered the number because the home studies aren't 100% accurate, and you don't want to start at too high of a pressure, that can be worse sometimes than a low starting pressure since it triggers CAs
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