Symptoms of pressure being too high??

[MrEGuy]

Hello,
We recently purchased a Dream Station Auto from the US and my wife has been using it for the past three weeks. We left the machine wide open (4-20) as we didn't see any harm and she had used a hire one wide open with no problems. The sleep doctor at the hospital gave her a prescription for a Fixed machine set to 8cm just in case we needed it to buy a machine. He didn't see auto as a necessity, he also said that the 8cm was his best guess based on his inspection. This fit with the report from the previous hire machine that the 90% average was 7.5cm

My wife recently went to the GP complaining that she was dizzy and had chest pain. The GP ordered blood tests etc. When I got home I thought I should check her machine just in case it was too much oxygen. The machine showed that her 90% average was 10.9cm. I did notice a few of the settings had changed since I set it up e.g. the modem was turned on even though I turned it off as it will not work in Australia. I am not sure if this was our two year old who enjoys pressing buttons. All of the pressure settings looked how I expected them to be. My wife's next consultation with the sleep specialist is not for 6 months.

What if any are the symptoms of having the pressure on the machine too high? Is there anything that might cause the 90% pressure to rise like that over a short period of time? Is it wise to keep using the machine the way it is? Should we bring the pressure limit down?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I will also get the wife to discuss it with the GP next time we see her, although she has previously mentioned that she is not familiar with Sleep Aponea and not had a patient with it in the past.

Steve

[cate1898]

I think you need to at least tighten up the range. Starting at 4 is difficult for most and may feel like you're not getting enough air, expecially if the 90% is 10.9. Exactly what you should change to I'll leave up to those more experienced to suggest.

[Ezil71]

The modem turns itself on automatically after 3 days. You can remove it by opening the flap on the left side of the machine and puling it out.

[Sleeprider]

I think you need to arm yourself with more data. #Sleepyhead is free, and you should use it. Its author Mark Watson is from Australia, so you should feel right at home. There a a number of reasons the pressure might climb to over 11 cm, but that can be limited in the settings if it is causing distress. Since she used CPAP successfully with a pressure at 7.5, it would make sense not to start so low as 4 cm. I would move the minimum pressure to 5.5 or 6.0 and start there. This should be a comfortable pressure she has seen before without problems, and the machine pressure will rise as needed to deal with obstruction. For the time-being, you may limit maximum pressure to 10.0 for comfort. This is until you have a chance to install Sleepyhead and understand better what is going on.

Give these pressures try and download #Sleepyhead. Be sure to come back and let us help you to understand the data, and we can then give you recommendations based on something besides a closer auto CPAP implementation of your doctor's recommendation (that is the basis of the above settings based on + 2 cm of his suggestion of 8). When you're ready to post data, here are some tutorials on organizing the data and using Imgur to host the image files.

http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...ganization
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...pnea_Board

[EnigmaGrey]

imo, the machine seems to overcompensate when wide open. E.g. an ideal pressure might be 9, but because of the number of events while raising the pressure from 4 to 9, it then keeps going until it hits its maximum, then taper off.

Tightening the range from 4 - 16 to 8 - 16 left me with an 95% of 9 with it rarely ever going to 10. For me, it was the pressure setting of 4 that caused most my issues, from hyperventilating to headaches and sinus pain, to swallowing air causing chest / abdominal pain.

But I'm new to this.