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Unless the higher pressure made you feel better, I'd suggest you bring it back down. In fact, your obstructive events are so well controlled you might consider dropping your range down to 7 to 10 to see whether they stay controlled at lower pressures.
You don't have Cheyne-Stokes breathing, despite the label. That's a very specific kind of period breathing that creates a distinctive flow-rate trace. Your periodic breathing is just a stretch of unstable breathing. You have a CA, then you have recovery breathing, which is deep enough to set off another CA, and so on.
In addition to lowering your range, try reducing your EPR to 2. Normally I'd suggest you make just one change at a time, and ideally that is what you'd do. But you have just a week to get this figured out, so if you'd like to make both changes at once, go for it.
Thank you Dormeo!
Considering I wss accidentally on epr 2 for 3 nights or so already, ill switch to that with a pressure of 7-10.
On a side note I totally understand only changing one variable at a time, its the same exact thing when trying to dial in a shot of espresso regarding grind size, grams of coffee, water temperature, and brew length.
Unfortunately sometimes you gotta break the rules lol.
Thank you for the clarification on the flagged CSR events, those definitely made me raise an eyebrow and have a little concern.
And one more question: is the use of sleeping aids such as zzzQuil a bad idea? My gut feeling and some google results say yes because it may relax muscles and cause OAs, and because it weakens your body's ability to wake up and breathe in an emergency. Just figured I would ask because I did see some conflicting results saying it was safe as well.
Note especially that this drug can make you feel drowsy the next day. It can help people fall asleep, but I'm not sure how well it works to keep people from waking up during the night.
7-10 pressure on EPR 2 for the past 3 nights has been going well. Yesterday I actually felt pretty good and got a decent bit done for the first time in a while!
No questions at this point, just wanted to update you that your suggestions have been helping me, so thank you again!
Just wanted to say how glad I am you're starting to feel better. I also see you're spending more time in bed and (probably) getting more sleep. Your leaks look minimal and just fine; don't give them a thought unless they bother you.
I'd say stick with these settings for now. Once your CAs settle down, you might consider bumping EPR back up to 3. It could take a while for your body to adjust, so be patient. I'd say wait until your CA index is pretty consistently below 2.
Well I'm back after about 6 weeks, keeping my pressure 7-10 but about every 1.5-2 weeks I increased it by 0.2, and am now at 8-10.4 (will probably drop max pressure back to 10, my 95% is usually 8.4-9.4ish). I also increased EPR to 3 7 days ago.
I had my first appointment with the in-person sleep doctor not long after my last post, and it was informative but they couldn't offer any real guidance to me because they didn't have a lot of data to look at yet. Going back next week to see if that will change.
Despite my AHI being under 5 most nights, even around 2-3 quite often, I feel no different than before I started CPAP. I'm still waking up many times throughout the night and dealing with all the side effects of poor sleep.
I've been looking into UARS and I seem to fit the bill according to a few different sources I've seen - Tall, thin, male, AHI <5 but RDI >5 or >10, low amount of obstructive apneas (in my case I have pretty close to non-zero obstructive events, assuming what little amount I do have is when I sleep on my back which is rare).
A few days ago I discovered that when my mouth is completely shut (teeth together) my breathing is quite restricted, and I can feel some resistance at the back of my nose / in my throat. When I open my jaw or even extend it forward a little bit it clears up dramatically.
So I got a cheap boil-and-bite sports mouthguard to see if that would help keep my jaw open and clear the airway and have used that for the past 2 nights. Sadly it wasn't a magic fix, still several arousals per night.
My flow limits on those 2 nights are the lowest they have ever been, though.
I've seen mixed cases of doctors dismissing UARS entirely, or people being diagnosed and treated accordingly so I guess it depends on the specific doctor you go to.
I'm wondering if there are any specific questions I should ask, or any tests I could ask them to do on me to help that process. Or even if an in-person study or titration with different types of machines would be an option to see if anything helps me. Maybe a reference to an ENT to determine where my breathing resistance is coming from?
I'm really not sure what I should do, but I want to be proactive about this and advocate for myself the best that I can. I feel like CPAP isn't doing anything for me.
I'll attach a few nights from the past weeks, one of them I tried fixed pressure of 8.4 to see if pressure changes were affecting me in any way. Didn't really seem like it.
Dormeo mentioned that pAHIc refers to central events.
You had several in your sleep study and they are not capable of being addressed with your present machine
If you subtract out yout CAs, you AHI is looking much better.
Even your flow limits look good in the recent charts
You may need a different machine. I will let the more experienced people speak to this.
Good luck.
Right, the reason I asked is because I did an at-home sleep study and was thinking maybe a lab study would be more accurate, and a lab titration may be even better.
Thank you
