(09-09-2017, 03:12 PM)Sleeprider Wrote: First of all, look at those great respiratory statistics. Great tidal volume, good respiration rate and nothing but good health there. A bit of leakage in teh nasal mask, but nothing out of control. Your Philips unit does not graph flow limitation but charts it as an event, and just a couple events showing in the FL line. Events are entirely hypopnea which suggests you could benefit from increasing your minimum pressure (5), by at least .5 cm and possibly 1.0 cm to 6.0. I think I'd try 6.0 unless the pressure bothers you and give that a try.
Good results to start!
I have studied the charts and am trying to understand your comments. While I can make some educated guesses about them, I really don't have any understanding about what they mean at this point and I have no frame of reference regarding good or bad data.
I am a firm believer that I am my best advocate for my own healthcare, and I routinely discuss things with my primary care physician so that I can make informed decisions. I have researched how to get into the clinician setup for my machine, and have reviewed all the settings. Not because I intend to change them, but because I simply want to know what the device can do and try to understand why it is set up the way it is.
If you will, could you help me understand ( or point me in the right direction to read ) what your looking at when you suggest increasing the minimum pressure and how I can learn to evaluate my data. I'm not opposed to making the change at some point on my own, however we are only looking at a single nights worth of data and I guess I feel like I should give my provider the courtesy of allowing her to do her job without me making changes unknown to her.
Regarding leaks, with my very limited experience I don't see how a mask can be 100% leak free 100% of the time. I sleep on my sides due to a back injury, I am overweight and toss and turn a lot during my sleep just trying to stay comfortable. When you are looking at leak data, what or when does a leak become significant and when is the fit good enough. I currently am using a cushion, as it was comfortable but I also felt that the pillow was comfortable (but maybe a little more intrusive). My provider gave me an appropriate size pillow to exchange if I wanted to try it. She didn't really want to, stating that my insurance would only pay for one, but that they did have a 30 day fit guarantee. When I asked about the cost of the extra pillow it was insignificant with respect to just what it costs me in fuel to drive the roundtrip to exchange it, so I said I would just pay for it myself as I would rather have an option at home to try. The problem I see with this approach of "try it and see" is again that I have no frame of reference and I could easily see someone getting into a "chasing the rainbow" situation trying every mask available. I hope that makes some sort of sense.
I like to read, point me in the right direction and Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge.