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One good night, now leak issues?
#1
One good night, now leak issues?
Hi everyone,

I'm new to CPAP (6 days in) and I can tell it's making a little difference, though one of the nights was the best sleep I've ever had in my entire life. I have been experimenting with the pressure and different settings and how to set the tube up near my bed. I just want to be able to sleep like I did on 11.23, but I think there are some weird leak issues going on. I swear last night my mouth didn't open and the tube was perfectly set up by being tied to the top of my beds headboard.


Using the DreamStation Auto CPAP with the Dreamwear Nasal Cushions

Here are some sleepyhead graphs:

Having trouble posting them.. lol


I have had turbinate reduction done, almost 2 months now. This greatly reduced my sleep hours from 10:30 - 12 hrs (12hours a lot of the time), to 9 -10:30 (9:30 - 10hrs mostly)

Also, I'm 24, male, 170lbs, 5'9"
I used to swear I don't snore, but I've woken up snoring out of my nose a few times (I know it wasn't a mask leak)
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#2
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
I had to shrink down the graphs and remove last nights to fit it into 200kb, couldn't edit top post, but here are the SleepyHead graphs, top one was the best night ever, and the bottom one was a night ago.

   
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#3
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
Hi sleepyguy99,
WELCOME! to the forum.!

Hang in there for help with interpreting your graphs and I wish you good luck with your CPAP therapy.
trish6hundred
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#4
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
Thanks Trish.

The past few days I've done a lot of different things to see what is going on.

Two nights ago:
I redid how I setup the tube to putting it on the side of my headboard.
I redid the straps on my head by letting it leak and then tightening it.
I tried taping my mouth shut (this is pretty scary, but it worked like half the night and then ended up leaking air out the side significantly)
I slept kinda bad, I woke up with the tape on and felt okay, but then later on it was basically off and didn't feel so good.

[Image: gPfKAv6.png]

Last night:
Switched from Medium-Wide nasal cushion to Medium.
Did the straps evenly in the back a little tighter after it leaked.
Made a home made chin strap out of underwear elastic (lol)

[Image: 62r1sCb.png]

Looks like I did reduce the leakage a bit, but the AHI is still kinda high. I slept okay, but I think I had to sleep 10 hours.

I know it's still early on, but that night where I got the 3.23 was insane. I only slept like 7 hours and it was the best sleep of my entire life, 100% (or should I say 500%) difference. Maybe I was just lucky that night and had minimal leakage, never ended up on my back? Or I just didn't wake up as much..

I'd appreciate any feedback, I have a chin strap coming in the mail, might also try a mouth guard or even taping it again (how dangerous is this? lol)

Do I need to raise the pressure? I've woken up at least 5 times in the last few days visibly snoring, shouldn't the machine be raising the pressure higher to stop this? But why was I able to sleep so well with the same settings and get a 3.23?
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#5
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
Leaks are looking beter with the most recent graph. Speaking of graphs, it would help to shrink the monthly calendar by clicking the triangle to the left of the date, and then turning off the pie chart in the menu File/Preferences/Appearance. That will reveal a lot of missing information.

There are a couple curious things about your charts. First looking strictly at events, you seem to have a lot of obstructive apnea and hypopnea. The odd part is, this is not accompanied by flow limitations and snores as we would expect for that kind of problem. This also means, your machine does not get any advance cues that signal a need to increase pressure to prevent the OA. As a result, you are well into series of apnea before the machine can respond, and it drops pressure before those episodes are completed. Bottom line, you probably need higher minimum pressure because you don't send the typical warning signs that the machine relies on to increase pressure in advance of events.
Sleeprider
Apnea Board Moderator
www.ApneaBoard.com

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#6
RE: One good night, now leak issues?

Welcome to the forum!!!!

-First thing goes first. You must fight with the leaks. That's the golden rule with CPAP. Is very difficult to got good results with the amount of leaks that you got.
-Not all nights are the same. When you and your system be very well fine tune, you will discover that are bad nights without explanation.
-Keep going, you are doing good.
Ralph.
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#7
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
Thank you Sleeprider and natyprueba!

Last nights results were a lot better, 5 hours of sleep, but it was quality sleep for sure. I attempted to go back to sleep, but just couldn't.. I changed the pressure from 12-16 to 14-17. I also taped my mouth because I really wanted to eliminate any possible leakage. There was still some leakage, but not too bad.

I'm guessing I want to keep the leakage something like 20L/min or not significantly over the "redline" whatever that is.

[Image: 7YsCiZh.png]
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#8
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
This last chart looks pretty darn good, and the trend is in a positive direction. You can see that the pressure peaked during a period of marked flow limitation. The machine responded fast enough from 14 cm to probably prevent a cluster of OA and H from getting established. I wouldn't change a thing for a while. 5-hours of "quality sleep" will get you by, and it's a building block for even better results.

Nice improvements on the graphs!
Sleeprider
Apnea Board Moderator
www.ApneaBoard.com

____________________________________________
Download OSCAR Software
Soft Cervical Collar
Optimizing Therapy
Organize your OSCAR Charts
Attaching Files
Mask Primer
How To Deal With Equipment Supplier


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.
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#9
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
So far things are going ok, I ended up raising the pressure to 15 and that seems to cover most events and it rarely goes above 16 (Haven't had an AHI over 4 since, always like 3.5 - 2.5). Only issue now is mask leakage still (I think I resolved the mouth leaks).. It seems I have to tighten the mask super tight to get no leakage, which causes me to wake up in pain + it is irritating.

My nose might be crooked a little bit to one side or maybe I'm in between sizes. The band over the head of the DreamWear for the tube ends up sliding down sometimes which causes the nose part to loosen and leak.

I might end up trying the Airfit P10 since lots of people on here seem to like it, only issue will be not having it over my head which might be resolvable with an overhead mount.
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#10
RE: One good night, now leak issues?
I've tried the P10 for a few nights and I swear that last night should've been like 0% leaks and below 3 AHI..

I used a chin strap and some mouth tape (the mouth tape didn't come off)

I know I'm still very early on and jumping the gun by trying this new mask, but I just have no idea why or how it's leaking. I feel around my face and air is only leaving the exhale ports. I do move around in my sleep a lot and end up on my stomach a lot of the time, but I couldn't cause any leaks while awake doing that.


[Image: ME4GG5F.png]

[Image: A0ebq7p.png]
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