erratic vs calm oxygen waveform

[crave303]

   

I am very curious to know what exactly is happening on the calm portion of the oxygen waveform.

I assume the calm part, which is in stark contract to the erratic part, is when you are asleep?

Or is it a particular part of your sleep cycle? e.g. REM, SWS etc?

[Geer1]

There definitely seems to be a correlation with rem sleep and in the case of the beginning you are awake. There may possibly be periods of apnea/hyponea as well.

Rem sleep occurs in a periodic nature roughly every 90 minutes and usually gets longer as the night goes on. This pattern fits pretty well with that. There seems to be a bit more rem sleep than I would expect(I believe average is around 25%) though so some might also be due to arousals and periods of being awake or periods of disordered breathing.

[Dormeo]

These are just reports on your O2 saturation levels and your respiration rate. Did you have a full sleep study? If so, do you have the full report? The two variables here might change for all kinds of reasons. You’d need to see more information to know why some periods were “calm.”

[Geer1]

The calm periods are what normal good quality sleep/breathing looks like. Rem will always mess with it a bit but other periods of sleep should be fairly smooth. 

I assume you are trying to figure out if you may have sleep disordered breathing. If so I would say you should get checked as there is an indication of it.

For reference here are three of my oximetry reports. One without CPAP and two with CPAP. The one without CPAP you can see breathing is a little rougher and it is easy to see my rem periods, one of the CPAP ones was a good night with low AHI nice CPAP OSCAR data and a nice smooth SPO2 graph, one of the other CPAP ones was a poorer CPAP night (by my standards, my AHI etc is never bad) and you can see it is only minorly better than the night without CPAP.

[crave303]

Thanks... your patterns seem much more uniform, where as mine seem to alternate between two extremes, which is interesting. I assume these black marks above the waveform indicate derangements - and I note there is never any derangements during the "calm" periods... so why is that? Are apneas impossible during this phase of sleep for some reason?

(I don't have a full sleep study, so this is just a pulse oximeter)

[OpalRose]

You have five threads here with the same question since June of last year.  Actually, the chart you posted in this thread is from June, 2019.

Maybe it's time to schedule an overnight sleep study.  If no insurance, it's easy enough to schedule an in home study.  

It's not always possible to tell if you have Sleep Apnea just from the Oximetry report. Consider getting the study done and have peace of mind.

[crave303]

damn, a jobsworth. like i said i have appt next week. don't need insurance as i don't live in a third world country 

i would wager a lot of people on here would know more than a GP about this stuff so it would be good to get an understanding before i go in, but i guess discussion is forbidden. not even trying to determine if i have apnea with this topic, was trying to understand what the peaceful sections of the waveform actually were.

[Geer1]

Your ODI(oxygen desaturation event) in that oximetry test was 21.3. ODI is often similar to AHI although it can fluctuate, I am guessing you will be diagnosed with mild to moderate OSA.

Your oxygen levels fall to 84% agreeing with potential diagnosis of mild to moderate OSA. This is a bad drop compared to some but it is enough to get an idea of potential issue.

There isn't that much to tell from the data, mostly just that there is indication of some sleep disordered breathing and possibly worse/exaggerated in rem sleep like majority of people.

[crave303]

Your ODI(oxygen desaturation event) in that oximetry test was 21.3. ODI is often similar to AHI although it can fluctuate, I am guessing you will be diagnosed with mild to moderate OSA.

Your oxygen levels fall to 84% agreeing with potential diagnosis of mild to moderate OSA. This is a bad drop compared to some but it is enough to get an idea of potential issue.

There isn't that much to tell from the data, mostly just that there is indication of some sleep disordered breathing and possibly worse/exaggerated in rem sleep like majority of people.

Thanks for the reply... I did an pulse oximeter while I was awake that actually has a higher index than this one I posted here

Is that not weird??

[harrywr2]

I did an pulse oximeter while I was awake that actually has a higher index than this one I posted here

About 1/2 of people with atrial fibrillation also have sleep apnea. 
There is also a very long list of other illnesses as well that are commonly found with sleep apnea. 
Your pulse oximetry report basically says 'this needs further investigation and testing as to possible causes'.
A pulse oximeter isn't a very good EKG or EEG or ECG.