Big swings in AHI?

[Mickeyplush]

My mother has had sleep apnea for several years during her last sleep study they believe she has gone from obstructive sleep apnea to central sleep apnea and is working on changing her machine to an ASV to help.  I have been watching her daily numbers on the MyAir site as well as just tried Oscar and noticed that she can have large swings in the amount of AHI from day to day.  Can have several days of numbers under 5 to some well over 50.  Are these types of swings normal with central sleep apnea?  There have been no changes to her daily routes or medicines.  Hopefully things will even out once we can get her new machine.

[staceyburke]

It sounds like positional apnea and you can't fix it with pressure.  Please put up a full days OSCAR with the charts I have listed in my signature at the bottom of the post.  We can tell if it is positional from those charts but can't tell with the summery you provided.    Your daily chart should look like this.....

[Mickeyplush]

Thank you!  I am still trying to learn what everything on the report means.

[Crimson Nape]

The Resmed utilizes the flow limit response to determine a pressure increase.  Due to your flow limits being so high, the AS11 is going to run to your set maximum in an attempt of over coming them.  We usually use the EPR setting to aid in reducing the flow limits, but yours is at 3, so that is not an option.   About the only thing I can recommend is to leave the EPR where it is, set your AS11 to a min/max pressures to 10 cm, and turn off the ramp if you can tolerate it.  

Also, please use the F12 key (Fn+F12 for a Mac) to take the screenshot.  We need to see the data on the left and not the calendar.  Try this setting out and post the results.
- Red

[staceyburke]

I agree with everything [b][b]Crimson Nape said.  But sometimes the cpap has a hard time making sure that they are centrals. If this came from a sleep lab, they would have called around her chest and other sensors that can tell if it is a central. A central means that they are literally not picking a breath there’s no obstruction. They just stop breathing for over 10 seconds[/b][/b]

If they are not centrals, they are controlled by the position. The person is laying in. Earlier, there was some positional apnea and some central apnea the OA’s clustered together or the ages clustered together shows positional apnea. Positional apnea cannot be corrected with pressure. The CPAP machine has to be a special Machine to fix central apnea position apnea is controlled by taking the position the person sleeping in and keeping it so air can fall through freely.

So positional has also called chin, tucking, or your chin drops to your sternum and cuts off your breathing. We use a cervical colder to help that a link to a cervical collar is in my signature at the bottom of this post. Please take a look at it and see if this might apply to your mother

The good news position is easy to correct. She won’t need a new machine. She just needs a way to keep her neck straight. If that doesn’t work then you’re gonna have to probably look towards a different type of CPAP machine and we get into that later, but please take a look at the link I provided

Code:

But

[staceyburke]

I agree with everything [b][b]Crimson Nape said.  But sometimes the cpap has a hard time making sure that they are centrals. If this came from a sleep lab, they would have called around her chest and other sensors that can tell if it is a central. A central means that they are literally not picking a breath there’s no obstruction. They just stop breathing for over 10 seconds[/b][/b]

If they are not centrals, they are controlled by the position. The person is laying in. Earlier, there was some positional apnea and some central apnea the OA’s clustered together or the ages clustered together shows positional apnea. Positional apnea cannot be corrected with pressure. The CPAP machine has to be a special Machine to fix central apnea position apnea is controlled by taking the position the person sleeping in and keeping it so air can fall through freely.

So positional has also called chin, tucking, or your chin drops to your sternum and cuts off your breathing. We use a cervical colder to help that a link to a cervical collar is in my signature at the bottom of this post. Please take a look at it and see if this might apply to your mother

The good news position is easy to correct. She won’t need a new machine. She just needs a way to keep her neck straight. If that doesn’t work then you’re gonna have to probably look towards a different type of CPAP machine and we get into that later, but please take a look at the link I provided

Code:

But