what is your percentage of days of ahi 5 or greater?

[sheepless]

clearly I need some help. time to give a little history and post some statistics and graphs. should I do that here or start a new thread?

[pholynyk]

I suggest starting a new thread with a title reflecting what you want to know. Let this one run for a bit to see if more people respond.

Just looking at mine for the last nine months, I had 6 nights over the (roughly) 270 days, or about 2%.

[jaswilliams]

I should start a new thread asking for advice and posting some graphs

[sheepless]

yeah, hoping others chime in with their stats. obviously not definitive but reports so far speak to the value of apnea board forum members sharing experiences and suggestions.

[Fedman]

975 days of cpap use, 1 day over 5.  (Sleep test showed AHI of 26.)  I took to cpap like a duck to water so I'm thinking my results are a-typical.

[sheepless]

I wanna be a duck too! I feel like I'm barely treading water. in 1987 my sleep study ahi was about 15 and all central (and never treated). 30 years and 40 pounds later, Nov. 2016: ahi 72.7 and 51% obstructive. I wonder, is there a correlation between higher ahi and treatment difficulty? intuitively makes sense but I don't know. your responses reinforce my inkling that apap not working so well for me yet. will post some background and graphs in a new thread soon...

[mesenteria]

Something isn't working....obviously.  My very incipient understanding is that a person with a lot of centrals or with complex (combination) apnea might do much better with an ASV...aut-servo ventilator.  Are you...have you only been... on an APAP all this time?

The more informed people hear will take a look at any data you can furnish using sleepyhead.org's freeware if your machine has telemetry via the 3G/4G net, or an SD card reader.  They will need to see some periods graphically during which you experienced any problems, especially those that recur nightly.

[sheepless]

as I think about this, I suspect my 30% days of 5+ ahi is a bit inflated. I've been playing around with settings quite a bit, pretty much through only slightly systematic trial and error. sometimes I might even have chosen a setting anticipating a lousy result just to rule it out. seems likely that the more trial and error, the more likely to get some lousy results. but even taking that into consideration, my number is still way higher than the numbers reported by others' here.

yes, this apap is the only machine I've ever used. when I finally decided to try to get help again in late 2016, I went to the doc assuming I'd need bilevel or asv because my history of predominantly central apnea. doc wasn't interested in my 5 prior sleep studies though (in his defense, my most recent sleep study was more than 10 years old) and because insurance requires trying cpap before bilevel before asv I started with apap. doc wanted to sell me a machine out of his office but I said I wanted to rent until we were sure apap is the machine for me so they sent me to a dme. after a couple compliance appointments I asked doc about the centrals which had clearly diminished about as much as the obstructives on apap (ahi after first setting after titration was 5-6 after 30 some days with remaining unresolved apneas mostly obstructive) - doc, delighted with this result said with a shrug: "dunno why but we'll take it, buy the machine".

I feel like I'm dancing around the edges of success and that it may well be possible get decent therapy from this machine. after all, 70% days are below 5; problem is that it always creeps up at some point. looking at sleepyhead statistics, I have had less than 5 averages at a number of settings but what's hidden in the averages is that the daily ahi's for the last several days or so at that setting were increasingly worse. sometimes it's more obstructives; lately centrals have been increasing.

I have unresolved apneas even at max 20. my lips blow open just enough to leak and drool above about 13.4. actually, the last couple weeks this has been happening even at 11; no idea what's changed. I need to buy a new nasal pillow and headgear strap to see if that'll help but suspect I'll need a ffm to solve high pressure leaks. problem with that is having a full beard and on the advice of loved ones I prefer not to shave it off.

still, I just wonder if eventually I'm going to end up with a different machine to get more flexible/variable settings and to better address centrals. meanwhile I'll keep reading this forum, asking questions and keep fiddling for better results.

thanks for all the responses so far.

[Sleeprider]

It matters the type of apnea that you are recording, and it sounds like you may be experiencing predominately central events. We can work with variables like pressure and EPR, but your options are limited with centrals. I have seen a number of people with primarily central events coached to about what your are experiencing, but that when moved to ASV have near zero events.

My stats currently show 1023 days with average 0.81 and an OAI of 0.13. Have never touched 5 AHI, so the summary statistic is not even reported, I guess since 0% produces an error.

[Timur]

Over the last 18 months I've had one night when my  AHI was over 5 and that was due to being sick with a cold.

Most recent 3 month average AHI is 1.9 of which 1.5 is reported as being centrals.