hifiaudio wrote:CA = meaning "clear airway"? so all of those are centrals?
Yep....Pretty much that.
Resmed elected to call them "centrals"
Respironics elected to call them "clear airway"
both mean cessation of breathing but the airway is open
obstructive sleep apnea means cessation of breathing but the cause is the airway is physically blocked by collapse/sagging airway tissues.
The main problem with what these machines report is that they can't tell if a person is awake or asleep and often awake/semi awake breathing irregularities will be flagged by mistake. We don't breathe the same when we are awake...our breathing is much more irregular and we often pause our breathing and don't realize it.
Hold your breath for 10 second...that's technically a 10 second central. There is no air flow but the airway is open.
All apnea events (central, obstructive, hyponea) have to last at least 10 seconds and have a certain amount of reduction in air flow to earn a flagged event. That's why sometimes we see reductions in flow that look to us like they should get a hyponea flag but they don't because the reduction in flow isn't large enough.
It's not uncommon for first night reports to include a LOT of awake/semi awake breathing because they don't sleep so great the first few nights. So we don't automatically push the panic button when we see this number of centrals reported on the first few nights...it might be some awake/semi awake stuff getting flagged.
A few centrals here and there is no big deal. We all have them and it's entirely normal to have a handful but not this many. Sleep onset centrals are normal..I have them on occasion but I might only see 1 or 2 all night...not 10 per hour and all night long.
I don't know if you had a large number of centrals during the diagnostic sleep study or if these centrals just popped up during the titration sleep study. If they only popped up during the titration sleep study then maybe they will reduce on their own with a bit of time after the body adjusts to cpap pressure but if they were present in large numbers on the diagnostic sleep study then the pressure didn't cause them and I have no idea why this APAP machine was even considered because it will never be able to deal with a large number of centrals beyond tell you that they occurred.
There's a lot that we don't have in terms of information here...like exactly what did those sleep studies say was the problem and if you haven't got copies of the studies I strongly suggest that you get them.
How many centrals are too many? It depends on a lot of things but generally 5 per hour or large clusters that cause desats or sleep disruptions but maybe the overall per hour average is low but the clustering is the problem.
So a lot to be evaluated besides just a number per hour.
Did you discuss the centrals with the doctor?
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