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[Treatment] May be Too Late for Me Too
#21
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Tubaman, I was looking to see if the higher minimum pressure might improve/ increase your tidal volume. It appears not to have changed much, and that is not unexpected. Tidal volume can be increased with higher pressure support, but not so much with simply higher pressure. Pressure support is a feature of bilevel machines like the Vauto, and the EPR on your Autoset is not really going to do it. My question was mainly out of curiosity.

Quote:Tidal volume is the lung volume representing the normal volume of air displaced between normal inhalation and exhalation when extra effort is not applied. In a healthy, young human adult, tidal volume is approximately 500 mL per inspiration or 7 mL/kg of body mass.

Yours is a bit on the low side, but due to a relatively high respiration rate (BPM) your minute volume is about normal. I don't know of it's significance and it's probably nothing to be concerned about.
Sleeprider
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#22
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Mr. bwexler,
I apologize for 'flaming' you! I have not been in the best of spirits lately (for obvious reasons). I make no excuse, I wasn't aware of my erroneously entering the previous (past) month and you noticed -- thank you for noticing.

I spent an hour, or so, at my sleep doctor's office. He is putting me on oxygen (I don't know how much). Near the end of the consultation he said that my daytime SpO2 levels were OK and I questioned that by saying they run around 91% - 93%, sometimes below 90%, occasionally above 93%. I think I annoyed him as he quickly put an SpO2 sensor on my finger and I noticed it was not completely on and about to fall off (the cable it was attached to was taut). I moved myself closer to the SpO2 meter to relax the cable and I physically re-positioned the sensor. Their display came up with 93% and then dropped to 92%. He commented that was marginal. I will also be getting tested & examined by a pulmonologist. The process is going to take me into mid October before all is said and done. In the meantime I'll be trying oxygen.

I did not calibrate my oximeter. I had previously been tested overnight with their oximeter & my oximeter side-by-side on my left hand. I got a quick glance at their data noticed that my data was slightly optimistic compared to theirs. I'm satisfied that my oximeter's data will probably actually be slightly better (higher %) than theirs.

I guess this is about where everything stands at this time. Thank you all for your help and information. At least I think I was able to talk intelligently to my sleep people.
Tubaman
"We run as fast as we can.  To get as far as we can.  So that when we finally get there we have that much further to run to get back to where we should have been."
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#23
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
You have to own it, no one else will. Good job. THe O2 will get you sat level up while you see if anything else can be done with CPAP to improve it.
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#24
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Tubaman, Please keep us up to date on how you respond to the O2 therapy while waiting for your appointment with the pulmonologist. I'm especially interested since I'm on a path with emphysema that will put me in that place pretty soon. I think I could benefit from O2 use for better sleep but I'm resisting until things get worse.

My present FEV1 score is 1.5 L/min and my FEV1/FVC ratio is 60%. You should ask your doctor for those reading so that you have a benchmark for your future use. The FEV1/FVC ratio is the factor commonly used for diagnosing COPD while the FEV1 is monitored to track the degeneration rate of your lung function.

Dude
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#25
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
for what it's worth, adding in oxygen certainly helped a lot in my case.
Ed Seedhouse
VA7SDH

Part cow since February 2018.

Trust your mind less and your brain more.


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#26
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Shy Hello Tubaman.
About your Spo2 readings, I would like to underline the following:
-The Oximeter available in the market are not very reliable, they go to 2-4% of main error. That means that your reading can be + - 2 to 4 units more or less.
The doctors ones are not much better. You must take your readings of Spo2 in a very consevative way.
-Your oximeter is already old (2 years) the life span of these equipment is about 3 years.
-You can check the calibration of your equipment with the one in the Dr office , next time that you got over there.
- I checked (more or less) the calibration of the one that I recently bought taking readings from my wife that doesn't have these kind of problems. My average sleeping are about 90-92 hers 94-96.
Ralph.
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#27
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Mr. natyprueba,
I purchased my Oximeter in October 2014 (not quite 2 years ago). A few weeks ago I was loaned an oximeter by the sleep people to check my overnight SpO2 readings at home. I had their oximeter on my left hand ring finger (their oximeter had a comfortable sleeve type sensor) and my oximeter was on my left hand index finger. I ran them both overnight, literally side-by-side. I found out last Tuesday (July 19) that their overnight report stated I was under 88% for 309 minutes. Mine indicated I was under 88% for 209 minutes. Compared to the Sleep folks oximeter, mine is actually more "forgiving" at this time. Both reports strongly indicated that I have low blood oxygen. I have overnight printouts from my oximeter dating back to late October 2014 -- at this time there are over 150 printouts. I can't see any difference between the printouts from 2014 and the current printouts where I'm now on auto CPAP. The SpO2 graphs look the same and the numbers average out around the same values (they vary from night to night but the numbers are pretty much the same). The only thing I can see is the areas where the SpO2 values vary radically, cycling up and down sometimes for an hour or more, the recent auto CPAP charts are maybe not quite as dense (I cannot think of how else to describe them) as the pre-CPAP charts. However, the SpO2 averages are pretty much the same, pre & post.

I almost never get any basal SpO2 averages above 90% when sleeping (I would be happy if they were in the 90% to 92% range). Most of the time they are in the 87% to 89% range. I don't know what my wife's are -- she doesn't want to have the thing attached to her finger all night. I talked her into wearing the thing for about 30 minutes one evening. Her values ran between 94% to 96%. I then took my readings for about the same length of time and I got about 91% to 93%. In my case a bit low for awake readings. Since we're both kind of old my doctor said I (we) should not expect readings quite as high as a younger person might get. And so it goes...

Thank you for your information. I hope my SpO2 oximeter lasts a while longer as I just ordered a remote sensor for it. I will post the results I get (or don't get) when I start the oxygen assist. I haven't heard from anybody since I was told the equipment was ordered so nothing new to post at this time.

Tubaman
"We run as fast as we can.  To get as far as we can.  So that when we finally get there we have that much further to run to get back to where we should have been."
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#28
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
There are no "consumables" in the meter. It uses optics to measure O2 so as long as it does not get too dirty it will work fine. Read up on them and found it interesting: they use a red LED and it measure how much red light is reflected from your skin. oxygenated blood is red, else it is blue. As long as the sensor is not dirty or the red LED blocked, you will get good readings. Any reading below 60% is no longer accurate, regardless of hospital grade meters or not.
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#29
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Hello.
I didn't got your answer until today, because I didn't check.Sorry for that.
I read it and for your comments you are in trouble (like me).
I only wanted to warn you about this Oximeter reliability .
You must be very conservative with their data.
That doesn't mean that we must dump them. They are useful. My wife and me discovered that when we sleep laying in our backs we both got in trouble. This happens to the majority of us, because is a matter of gravity.
The tongue is pushed down again the air ways and over there began the problems.
I hope you the best in your therapy.
Ralp.
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#30
RE: May be Too Late for Me Too
Regarding your tuba playing: if anything, I think that should have improved your breathing. (IE you might be worse off if you hadn't been a tuba-ist). I played the bassoon in high school only (40+ years ago), but my asthmas doctor's tests still show me to have a deeper lung capacity than many people.

As such, my first fittings at a nasal mask for CPAP had them telling me to use a size small. After 30 minutes, I felt suffocated / oxygen starved. Switching to a size medium was a huge help. More recently, I've switched up to a size large (I'm a smallish female) and I love getting that much air into me!! This isn't directly relevant, since you have a full face mask. Forum: is there a way that a full face mask can be *not* supplying as much air as a deeper lung requires?

But yes, adding oxygen into the CPAP lines is helpful too. My ex had that setup.
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