Difference between revisions of "New to Apnea? Helpful tips to ensure success"

Revision as of 17:02, 8 June 2017

New to Apnea - helpful tips to ensure success

Understanding sleep apnea

A video on sleep disordered breathing & two forum articles explaining sleep apnea

New to CPAP – The Process

Defining the process & what to expect (from denial through getting a CPAP machine)

Obtaining medical records

Obtaining your records can help you greatly. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) is United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information. Under HIPAA, patients have certain rights to their own medical records ( (HIPPA Privacy Rule & Patients' rights) ) These rights include the right to obtain a copy of your Sleep study/studies, titration records and prescription(s). Obtaining a copy of these items can help patients form a greater understanding of their condition and may help avoid a repeat sleep study or titration.

Prescription - CPAP - APAP - BIPAP

Sample Prescriptions & Machine Recommendations

CPAP Machine Choices - read this before you accept a new machine

Patients are encouraged to avoid being "stuck" with a "dumb brick" CPAP machine (a CPAP that is not fully data-capable).

To avoid being "fooled" by a greedy Durable Medical Equipment (DME) provider, patients should read "Archangle's Machine Choices" (a wiki article written by Advisory Member "Archangle").

By obtaining a data-capable CPAP machine, the patient and doctor can monitor the effectiveness of CPAP treatment on an ongoing basis.

Using Free PC Software along with a data-capable CPAP machine will enable doctor & patient to monitor and chart the effectiveness of CPAP treatment. Go to Apnea Board's Private Files & Links area to learn how to obtain free PC software for CPAP machines. You will need to register for a free forum account to access that area.

Setup Manuals - Change your own CPAP Pressure

The nitty gritty of entering in to the "Clinician Mode" of a CPAP machine in order to change pressures and other settings.

Optimizing therapy

The basic steps to adjusting CPAP therapy

Using SleepyHead

Using SleepyHead - Data is the key to getting good feedback and SleepyHead is among the best software to help examine the effectiveness of your CPAP therapy.

• Download SleepyHead (free) Click on the icon for your operating system, then click on the downloaded file.
• Organize your Sleepyhead charts Organizing your SleepyHead charts is important, especially to help patients post relevant charts on the forum.
• Post from Imgur How to post screenshots of your charts using Imgur, a free image-hosting website
• RobySue's Beginner's Guide to SleepyHead A detailed reference guide to SleepyHead and how to interpretethe data

Mask Primer

Great information about selecting, fitting and using a CPAP mask & minimizing leaks

Help with posting a forum message

You must first register for a free forum account to post a message.

The Help button at top of every forum page is useful for obtaining help with a member's forum account. Forum Members may also ask for help in the Member Account Help Forum.

Members are encouraged to completely fill out their member profile to make it as easy as possible for you to obtain customized help from other forum members.

• Start a new thread. Add all your inquires to this new thread because this will retain your history for us in the responses to your queries.
• If you don’t have all this info don’t worry about it. As a general rule the more info we have, the better the advice you will get.
• Using multiple posts is acceptable.
• What type of Apnea do you have? (Obstructive, Central, Complex, Hyponea, RLS) Have you posted your sleep studies? (They have this information) If not post your Sleep Studies. It is especially important to know if you have Central or Complex Apnea.
• Include your daily charts. They include a lot of data that is used as the basis of advice delivered
• How do you feel? This relates to all things comfort and intangible things (my nose hurts)
• What do you want to know more about? What's giving you the greatest difficulty?
• Don't use the "Reply with quote" button button until you have familiarized yourself with its use. That's why we have threads, the info is in the above posts (history).

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