[Treatment] First stab at optimization

[Ferloft]

Hi all.

A few months ago my doctor told me I was diagnosed with "severe" apnea after doing a sleep study. The results were never shared with me so I am not sure what my original AHI was. I did two titration studies, but again don't know what my prescribed pressure was. About two weeks ago I was given an AirSense 11 from the DME and am looking to get the most out of the therapy. This is my first time uploading data to OSCAR so please let me know if there are any other charts I can share or any suggestions based off the data. Thanks!

[Gideon]

Welcome to the forum.

See how your events are clustered together? That implies a form of positional apnea. Typically we find this is you are tucking your chin. The fix is to get and keep your neck straighter at night. First try a pillow adjustment, basically use one pillow vs two, or a flatter, less firm pillow. If that doesn't work ( do it anyway), you will need, and I do think you will, need a soft cervical collar. Read the soft cervical collar and positional apnea links in my signature.

Once these are fixed we can tackle the rest. The events you are seeing do call for an EPR of 3 or greater but we need to manage the positional apnea to see how much of your apnea is positional. A properly fitted cervical collar can and has knocked positional apnea to zero overnight.

If you didn't have this positional apnea I'd be looking for a BiLevel, the VAuto for you. We need to wait and see on this.

[Ferloft]

Wow! Feel very fortunate to have an OSCAR team member provide feedback, thanks Gideon. Few questions for you since you're here..

• Has an SCC ever removed the need for xPAP completely or is it generally only used to compliment therapy?
  
• Is there any reason to keep my machine restricted to CPAP like it is or should I consider switching the mode to APAP?
  

[Gideon]

There can be reasons to leave it in CPAP mode, I didn't suggest auto now because your flow limits will push pressure to the max pressure set.

There is little to no medical protocol to use an scc for apnea of any kind.

The only way to know if you can eliminate your apnea with a sccis to take a titration test with an scc.

[Ferloft]

Here is another dataset from last night where I used only one pillow (due to comfort, not related to apnea). Does this signify less positional apnea?

[Ferloft]

Here are a few more of my recent results where I have been using a single pillow. Please let me know if you have any additional feedback. Thanks!