Hello everyone.
I'm Yimeng. I'm 23 years old guy who study in Finland. I have been on the forum for 2 years since I started CPAP treatment, though I rarely post or reply. I've learned a lot from here. Thanks to you guys!
I've diagnosed OSA during my first sleep study, but there was only 2 central apnea event. Then, I started to use CPAP (Resmed S8 Elite II). To some extend the therapy helped a little. However, I still feel sleepy during the daytime. It's easily for me to fall into sleep during lectures. A year ago, I have bought S9 AutoSet out of my own pocket, because I suppose that the pressure needed always increases. The machine tells me that I have mostly central apnea. I contacted doctor, he told me that the machine is not accurate, he doesn't believe that the machine can distinguish between OSA and CSA, and he refused to give me a second sleep study. I have on average AHI 1.6 which includes 0 OSA, 1.6 CSA. It looks fine. But I still feel lack of sleep.
Last September, I've moved to Helsinki to start my first year master study in university. I fell into sleep everyday during most of the lectures. This really frustrated me. So, I went to doctor to ask for a sleep study. The doctor refused me, even I showed the data from my machine. She told me that AHI 1.6 is very good number which means I have been treated very well by CPAP therapy, the reason it shows central apnea is because the leakage. (I do have problem with mouth leaking. I have tried chin strip, it helps sometimes. I have tried some full face masks, but haven't found any suitable for me. Recently, I was trying to train my mouth to close during sleep, I have got some progress.) In fact, I suppose that the machine has showed the right data, because sometimes when there weren't leaks, the events are still central apnea. In recent few weeks, I start to wake up at midnight, can't fall into sleep again. I feel terrible during daytime, I cannot concentrate when reading.
I have made an appointment with doctor on next monday. please give me some advices for how to convince the doctor to order me a sleep study. I guess that the reason why doctors didn't order me sleep study is because of money. In finland, KELA(The Social Insurance Institution of Finland) pays part of the bill, though I'm not a citizen of finland. To get a sleep study in private clinic would cost more than 300 euros which my insurance won't pay for(pre-existing condition). In public hospital, it cost me about 28 euros.
Thanks for reading and suffering my poor English.
Here are some pics of typical nights. Though there are leaks, but when there is no leak, CSA event still happens. I doubt that does the machine always(I mean in most of the times) interpret the apnea as CSA when leak from mouth?
The first sleep study report:
