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[Treatment] Can cpap help me?
#21
RE: Can cpap help me?
(08-27-2019, 05:53 AM)Noripterus Wrote: Dave, thank you. As you say, numbers don't really matter for me anymore.

As far as I know there are at least two point of views regarding the use of CPAP for treatment of UARS. The first one is to titrate until there are no more respiratory related arousals (measured per EEG) (that's what Stanford seems to be doing) and the other one, Krakow's view is to aggressively round out inspiratory airflow cruves.
But besides theory, there are a few people on the internet who have seen success by increasing their pressure way above the one that was needed to treat their apneas.

I have have frequent arousals. At least that's what my recordings look like. My flow curves are not fully rounded.

I am surely grasping at straws here and welcome any input.

Can you show us some flow curves?

If you are still experiencing flow limitations, a bilevel might be a better machine. I had many flow limitations that I couldn't get ride of using my regular APAP machine. I raised the pressure up to 14 but my curves were still a mess and I was starting to mouth breath because of the pressure. 

I switched to a bilevel, which I bought out of pocket, because I really wanted to see if I was going to feel better and didn't want to argue with doctors about it.  I really wanted to know if my flow limitations were the reason I was still so tired so I took the gamble and was ready to loose the money. 

Well, the gamble paid off. It turns out that with the pressure support set to 3 on the bilevel, most of my flow limitations are gone and I feel much better.  I don't know why the bilevel works so much better to address flow limitations but it does.
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#22
RE: Can cpap help me?
To chime in on alexp ‘s message: I asked about your goal because I was puzzled why you aren’t using the pressure support capabilities of your machine. Have you tried increasing PS and lowering the EPAP pressure? If you are showing flow-limited inspiration, that might be your best bet.
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#23
RE: Can cpap help me?
Dormeo, sorry, my bad. I didn't like the higher pressure support at first, that is all. I am getting used to it though and plan on increasing it further instead of EPAP.


alexp, that is very interesting! It's similar to what Krakow writes, apparently he doesn't know exactly why a bigger pressure difference seems to work better. I do wonder if I should "make a step back" and leave IPAP where it is now and lower EPAP.
Also, congratulations on that it worked out for you!!

Here are two examples, one with relatively low pressure early August:

   

one from yesterday:

   


Also, this apnea is weird, the sharp inspiratory spike before the apnea makes me think I might have been awake. Not exactly sure, would love some input on this one:

   
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#24
RE: Can cpap help me?
I would like to see to see full nightly result as well. These small segments are insignificant in and of themselves. You do not tweak on the basis of single events.
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#25
RE: Can cpap help me?
Sure, I did post my two most recent nights yesterday. Do you want to see more than that?
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#26
RE: Can cpap help me?
One is from early august, no date given, one is yesterday (OK), the other is from ????
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#27
RE: Can cpap help me?
Bonjour, I did post two nights with complete data yesterday (post #18), as you can see these nights are my most recent ones excluding today.

The snippets (post #23) I posted are from early August, from yesterday and from 24th of August (you can see the same apnea around 6:40 am in my screenshot i posted in post #18).
I am very sorry for any confusion I caused (not sure if its my poor sleep or my poor english Oh-jeez ) and appreciate your help.
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