Greendirt wrote:I've taken the limited comment since I posted the sleep studies to indicate there was no particular objection to my view that I never had sleep apnoea, despite the explicit diagnosis 'Severe OSA is evident'. The last study with 0.0 being the main reading for disordered breathing (AHI 1.3 overall) proves I don't have apnoea now. And the only relevant change was the pacemaker.
As was pointed out by zoocrewphoto, the original study showed 8 apnoeas, 1 central and 367 hypopneas in 7:50 of sleep - that's an AHI of 48, 47 of which are hypopneas. And maybe shallow breathing due to a slow heart rate led to those hypopneas being recorded.
I asked the original doctor if the there could be a link: I still remember his eye roll. He did concede that being tired could make anything worse, including syncope. But, it seems, quite possibly, syncope was the cause.
Since this came up here I had a chance to look at a pacemaker forum and I searched for sleep apnea. There were a few similar tales of 'apnea' symptoms disappearing post-pacemaker, especially amongst syncope (fainting) sufferers with a cardiac element.
Thus, I think it is reasonable to say that where someone suffering syncope who is also exhibiting sleep apnoea-like symptoms with mainly hypopneas evident, then it s worth considering if cardioinhibitory vasavagal syncope is the culprit not OSA, and a cardiologist is needed.
I suggested the possibility of shallow breathing, but honestly, I believe you do have sleep apnea and still have it. I believe you have positional sleep apnea and it was not found during the second sleep study since you didn't sleep on your back. As long as you don't sleep on your back, then you are fine. But only you know for sure if that is how you sleep now. And you don't seem to believe that this is the reason, so we can't agree.
I suspect that very few have responded since it is pretty clear that you are sure you don't have sleep apnea, and we can't convince you otherwise. The main point of responding is to really discourage other new people not to dismiss their diagnosis. We are used to seeing new people all the time hoping to find any reason to stop using a cpap machine. You may not need yours now, but your explanation does not currently make sense, and we have to be careful about giving people an excuse if they are looking for one. There will be other newbies who read your posts and figure they may have been misdiagnosed. They may quit and really mess up their health.
You have not come up with a valid explanation for the cpap WORKING without sleep apnea present. There is no reason for air pressure in the throat to help a heart condition. The machine was helping your sleep apnea. You did admit that you sleep on your side more now, and that could be an improvement caused by the pacemaker. But that doesn't mean that you didn't have sleep apnea, or that you won't have it again if you sleep on your back.
Who would have thought it would be this challenging to sleep and breathe at the same time?