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01-02-2020, 02:00 AM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2020, 02:07 AM by Chitlom.)
Few Apneas but many SpO2 Desaturations
Happy New Year all!
I have a CMS-50F and S10 Auto Set for Her. My AHI is rarely over 1.5, however, when I import the data into OSCAR it shows me having many SpO2 desaturations even though I am having relatively few apneas.
Not sure if it is relevant but I live at sea level.
I am wondering if anyone can shed some light on this and tell me if I should be concerned.
I have attached a screen capture from OSCAR, a zoomed in capture from OSCAR, and my Oximetry Report from SpO2 Assistant.
I apologize for the fact that the data from the oximeter is not synchronized with the data from my APAP, that has been a separate battle that I am still not winning.
Thanks in advance. You guys are amazing and without you I would not have come as far as I have with CPAP.
01-02-2020, 12:46 PM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2020, 12:48 PM by ApneaQuestions.)
RE: Few Apneas but many SpO2 Desaturations
Your time spent below 88% SpO2 is only a couple of minutes. (2.6 minutes)
Today I got email from my doctor saying that they only investigate further if the time spent below 88% is 30 minutes or more.
In my case, I have incidents of periodic breathing where you can see my SPO2 rise and fall by 10% in sych with my breathing anomalies.
If you can set the clocks on your oxiimeter and CPAP to be closer, the data will synchronize better and you may be able to identify which breathing events are causing your SpO2 drops.
Key is to get your oximeter in sync so you can try and look at the data in depth to see if desaturations are causing issues like arousal.
I just ordered one myself, my idea to try and sync them was to start both cpap machine and oximeter at the same time then determine time difference that way and adjust as necessary. Figured that should get it close enough that I could then make a minor change if data still seemed a bit off. If lag time during startup is an issue then another idea I had was to remove both cpap and oximeter at the same time with both operating, cpap should give large leak and oximeter should lose signal. If others have better ways to sync them I would be interested.
I don't think the odd desaturation is a big issue unless they are causing arousals or falling to very low levels. Yours aren't falling too low to really be worried about them but it is enough to make me think there may be a bit of room for improvement. I wonder if increasing EPR to 3 would improve SPO2, it would be the first thing I would try.