Ear Ache & Sinus Headache - Just started CPAP therapy

[Lou28]

I've been reading for a couple days and thought it was time to post. I'm new at all this. I was diagnosed with Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea a month ago. My AHI was 85.4 in the sleep study. I've done 11 nights on a new ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet with a nasal pillows mask, and my AHI has been below 4 every night with a best night of 0.8. I feel better rested than I have in months.

So far there has only been one negative: I've had what feels like a sinus headache and ear ache that gets worse throughout the day. I had nothing before starting treatment. I'm loving the sleep and breathing in general, but I'm hoping the headache and ear ache aren't going to be the trade off to get that. I've attached last night's SleepyHead data.

Any ideas?


[attachment=3282]

[Melman]

Welcome to the forum. I'm afraid I can't help you with your problem and I doubt the SleepyHead data will provide much help. But there may be others who have dealt with similar problems.

It appears you are doing well with respect to controlling your apnea but 4-20 seems like more of a range than you may need. A tighter range will probably give you even better control. But first, additional data will be required. I recommend that you organize your charts as described in the link in my signature. It will provide more useful data for assassinating you in fine tuning your settings.

[ajack]

do all the preventative stuff for it
http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/tc/bl...overview#1

Last resort is, I would back off the max pressure, 1cm at a time for a while 12cm? , which will increase your events a bit. Hopefully it will settle down soon for you.

[Melman]

It will provide more useful data for assassinating you in fine tuning your settings.

Don't worry, I don't carry a gun with a silencer. I'm just not careful when I let the spell checker make substitutions.
My kids really get a laugh from some of the texts I send from my cell phone.

[OpalRose]

Hi Lou28,
Im not sure about the headache and earache, but I can see from your graph that your pressure setting is not optimal for you.  

Your minimum pressure is too low to tackle the apneas.  It looks like you should be at 10cm minimum and 15cm max setting, but I would start by moving up the minimum to 9cm and 15 max and see if that helps.  If you are going to use ramp, start it at 6 for 15 minutes.

You could try an overnight recording oximeter to be sure your oxygen levels are not dropping too much at night.  See Supplier #19. Also, how are your blood pressure readings?  

Order the Clinicians manual for your machine:
http://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap-pr...tup-manual

[trish6hundred]

Hi Lou28,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Good luck to you with your CPAP therapy and getting your pressure dialed in to better meet your needs, hang in there for more responses to your post.

[Newbee2016]

Hi Lou28

Your min pressure is too low. Moving it up as OpalRose suggests would provide the floor support and may actually also reduce the need for the machine to auto adjust to almost 14H2O.

Do also arrange your sleepyhead charts so we can see the pressure and leak rate charts clearly. Follow the link below on how to do that.
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...ganization

All the best with your treatment.

[Sleeprider]

Hi Lou, welcome to the forum. It's pretty clear the minimum pressure needs to be increased to put you closer to your therapeutic needs. As far as the ear and sinus headache, it's not normally a side-effect for the therapy, unless there is an underlying cause. If it continues, be sure to check for possible low-grade sinus or ear infection.

Your machine offers a comfort feature that might assist with the higher pressure and give you some relief for the pressure on your ears. Exhale Relief Pressure (EPR) can be used to reduce the pressure during the exhale phase of breathing, and it can be set to provide a pressure relief of 1 to 3 cm. You may want to give it a try as it can really enhance comfort, but I would choose the lowest setting (1, 2, 3) that feels right and keeps your results acceptable. It should be available in My Options menu on your machine, but if it was not enabled, you may need to go into the clinical settings. You will be doing that anyway to adjust he minimum pressure. Just press the control knob and home button (bottom center) at the same time, then select clinical settings. You can then scroll through the options. Your minimum pressure will be near the top of the settings menu, and EPR will be under Comfort settings farther down. Also be sure to enable PLUS on the Essentials option so you get full therapy data on the menus.

[Lou28]

Sleeprider,

I turned on the EPR to 1 last night. It has been off to this point. I'm still trying to decide if it helped or not.

[Marillion]

I found I never really noticed much difference at 1 and my pressure settings are similar to yours (or better put, close to where I think your pressure settings may end up landing.) I found a setting of 2 didn't affect my results much and was quite a bit more comfortable than 1. When I tried 3, I found I got a few more CA events and it didn't really add much to my comfort level.