Oscar question - "flow restriction events"

[bemused]

I'm hoping someone can explain this to me, as I think I am not getting it. What exactly are the events being flagged with the "experimental custom events flagging"? My impression was that they were basically hypopneas that were either missed by the machine or not flagged because they were shorter than 10 seconds. Is that right, or am I way off base?

And what are the suggested settings? I had mine set to 50% and 8 seconds for FR1 and 25% and 8 seconds for FR2. This ended up with big clusters of FR1s and the occasional FR2, which it does appear the machine is responding to with pressure spikes, at least some of the time. But they also seem to be mainly happening when I am awake or in transition, so may just reflect junk breathing.

I am meeting with my doctor on the 30th and would like to know if these are something I should discuss with her, or if they are even worth tracking.

Thanks!

[Gideon]

Those are for ur use when trying to identify and locate issues that don't meet standard definition. For example, see if while you have virtually no defined 10 second+ apneas, are you having a lot of 8 or 9 second apneas. In general I wouldn't show them to a doctor unless I was trying to demonstrate that kind of a problem, and then I would back that up with detailed expanded flow rate charts.

[bemused]

So just to be clear, a 50% reduction for 8 seconds would in essence be a short hypopnea, right? Which does seem worth tracking if I have a lot of them. And which would probably be addressed by increasing the EPAP range.

Makes sense, thanks!

[Sleepster]

So just to be clear, a 50% reduction for 8 seconds would in essence be a short hypopnea, right?

Well, it has to last 10 seconds or more to be an official hypopnea, so with that semantic convention, 10 seconds would be the shortest possible hypopnea. But that is just semantics.

Which does seem worth tracking if I have a lot of them. And which would probably be addressed by increasing the EPAP range.

Makes sense, thanks!

Yes, if I had a lot of them I would attempt to correct them, because they could be lowering the quality of my sleep. But it seems that if I was having a lot of 8-second hypopneas I'd also be having a lot of them that last for 10 seconds or more. Maybe. It's easy to answer these questions though with OSCAR.