Wonderbrah wrote:The higher the EPR the less pressure will be felt when exhaling, correct? So while a high number may be more comfortable, it may lead to more events per hour? So ideally, if you can stand it, an EPR of 0 is ideal?
if everybody was the same, then your "epr of 0 is ideal" might be accurate, however, it's not.
EPR is a limited bilevel, and there are therapeutic reasons for bilevel as well as comfort reasons.
the problem with epr comes in some edge cases.
for instance, say you need 9cm to keep your airway from closing, so you're happily at 10cm pressure, to give a bit of a safety margin... epr0, then decide you want some exhale relief and change the epr to 3. now, you've reduced your base pressure to 7... well below the 9 you need, and you start having apneas.
the proper method would be to raise the set pressure to 13, and set epr at 3, then you'd have inhale pressure of 13, exhale of 10, and you'd stay over your apnea threshold, plus you'd get a bit of assistance in breathing from the machine due to the differing pressures. with those settings, you'd be the same as a bilevel machine set to 13/10, or epap 10, ps 3.
like most things in cpap therapy, trying to oversimplify the concept leads to problems.
Get OSCAR
Accounts to put on the foe list: dataq1, clownbell, gearchange, lynninnj, mper!?, DreamDiver, Geer1, almostadoctor, sleepgeek, ajack, stom, mogy, D.H., They often post misleading, timewasting stuff.
