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So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
#31
RE: So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
(04-20-2015, 10:34 AM)Mark Douglas Wrote: If this is correct using any PAP machine will raise the possibility of induced CSA.

Central Sleep Apnea (CSA) is a condition and you have to meet certain clinical parameters to be diagnosed with it. It involves the body not breathing even though the airway is open. In a sleep study a chest belt confirms that there is no effort to breathe.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a condition and you have to meet certain clinical parameters to be diagnosed with it. It involves the body not breathing because the airway is collapsed. In a sleep study a chest belt confirms that there is an unsuccessful effort to breathe.

To be diagnosed with any type of sleep apnea the frequency of events (apneas and hypopneas) must be 5 per hour or greater. Less than that, even though you can still experience both central and obstructive apneas, you do not meet the criteria to be diagnosed with the condition, you are deemed "normal" and sent home with no prescription for CPAP therapy. If you snore you may benefit from somnoplasty or a dental appliance.

Fully data-capable CPAP machines emit pressure pulses during apneas in an attempt to determine if the airway is open or obstructed. Auto-adjusting CPAP machines can raise the pressure if the airway is obstructed, but they will purposely not raise the pressure if the airway is clear.

Some patients will develop an increase in the frequency of central apnea events in response to CPAP therapy. The theory is that the oxygen level in the blood is so high that the brain doesn't trigger the body to breathe. The fact that lowering the pressure can reduce the frequency of these central apnea events seems to support that theory.
Sleepster

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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#32
RE: So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
In support of Sleepster's comment, my CAs rose this past few months after starting therapy. It is very strange to look at your data and see that you stopped breathing for no reason five or ten times a night. And then, over the next month the CAs started decreasing in number. It's not something you see each night, but notice over two to three weeks of looking at data.

So I agree with the theory that one's body and brain need time to acclimate to new continuous oxygen/CO2 levels.
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#33
RE: So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
To buy an extremely expensive machine just because:
- you may be one of the very few who experiences CPAP induced central apnea events that results in an AHI over 5 due to the central index (CI) being so high
- of those few you may be one of those even fewer whose body and brain does not adjust to the machine and the CI continues to remain over 5 or increases

To buy that machine for those reasons is really just not worth the money. I do agree that if you wanted to prepare for everything, that a bilevel machine would be a good investment but only really if you had the money for it AND it had the ability to be a regular autoPAP. Otherwise, get an autoPAP and use it. A good one from SecondWind is not that much of an investment and can be used as a backup machine in a pinch should you need a machine with all the bells and whistles.

Look at it this way. You've heard there's a cat loose outside your house and you are preparing to go catch it. You are fairly certain it is just a regular tabby cat. But it could be a Maine Coon. Or it could be a Savannah. Or, since you live near a zoo, heck, it could be a tiger or a lion! You could either walk out in what you are wearing (jeans and tshirt) and nothing else. Or you could walk out with what you are wearing and a towel to help catch it and maybe a cat carrier for when you catch it. All of the above and maybe a net. Or you could purchase a safari suit online, order a dart gun complete with sedative, maybe get a whip, oh, and while you are at it, call Jeff Corwin.

Or you could take the towel, cat carrier, and net.
PaulaO

Take a deep breath and count to zen.




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#34
RE: So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
(04-16-2015, 04:51 PM)Mark Douglas Wrote: ....and spent a while working my way through the dialing tree to finally speak to a polite lady who says I gotta call something called carecentrix to answer my questions about equipment and costs ... (Thanks Jan!) so I call THEM and another polite lady makes it clear she won't say anything of value. I persist and she says I must have a sleep study authorization and then the study and the the results go and then they will see what provide best fits my needs blah blah blah. Well can you at least tell who your DME supplier is in the Cincinnati area? No can do and repeats canned speech.

Curious now I search carecentrix and find their website full of unicorns and pink rainbows and they claim an amazing 95% happy customer base ...... further searching carecentrix+complaints reveals a whole lotta people not so impressed and then on to carecentrix+complaints+cpap and boy did I get eyeful. Apparently there is a good chance I will be resold to something called Caprica which sounded cool until it became clear this had nothing to Battlestar Galactica but did have a worse rep than the Cylons.....

It is a chunk of money for an old retired guy and I almost had myself talked into trying to be patient and give the system a chance but now I'm thinking I drive 20 minutes to 1800cpap tomorrow morning and walk out $1000 lighter but out the door ready to rock and I don't need no stinking compliance badge. Don't have to deal with some Doc that resents my meddling in my own healthcare and has forgotten I AM ultimately the customer.

Why does this have to be so damned complicated?
My doctor tells me that only one of us can "play doctor" at a time!

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#35
RE: So I took a clonopin and called the insurance company ....
(04-20-2015, 11:03 PM)PaulaO2 Wrote: I do agree that if you wanted to prepare for everything, that a bilevel machine would be a good investment but only really if you had the money for it AND it had the ability to be a regular autoPAP.

I think every auto-adjusting bi-level machine can act like an auto-adjusting single level CPAP. If the industry would simply wake up and smell the coffee, these machines could be prescribed to everyone. Companies who make them charge more, but if they were forced to convert their production lines so that that's the lowest price machine they could make and sell, it wouldn't cost them anything more to make. As far as I can tell you can take any PRS1 machine and if you could figure out how to do it, make it into one by writing the right firmware to it. The hardware is the same!

I was lucky enough to find mine for $380 on craigslist.
Sleepster

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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