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Clear Airway/Dream Mapper

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:02 am
by MichellelLindsey55
Hi all,
I was just diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea mostly having hypoapnea events. I went to a sleep clinic and they hooked me up to a million wires and I was not diagnosed with central sleep apnea. I am younger, female and slim so I was very surprised. Anyway! I just got my dream mapper machine and my data is freaking me out a little bit.

My AHI was 8.5
My Clear Airway was 21 !!
Hypoapneas 27
Obstructive Apnea was 4

What is freaking me out is the clear airway number, does this mean I have central sleep apnea? And why am I still having so many events in spite of using a cpap machine? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

Re: Clear Airway/Dream Mapper

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 8:42 am
by EdNerd
Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the forums! I haven't been in the CPAP therapy game for very long, so I don't have a lot to give you just yet. But here's a few things:

First, if you register and show your equipment, you can get a lot more help. There's people who know your equipment inside and out and can help you adjust settings and such for better therapy.

Next is the Sleepyhead software. It gives much better data than the control panel on your machine. If you post the charts, you can get lots of help. There's a sticky at the top of the forums with links and tutorials.

Finally, what I've learned (or I *think* I've learned!) is that the "clear airway" or "central" apnea is supposed to be the brain not telling the body to breathe. While that's true, your CPAP machine can only read how you're breathing based on the air flow as you inhale and exhale. I'm sure we've all caught ourselves holding or "locking" our breath while we do something. Looking at my Sleepyhead data, I can often see clusters of "CA" events that I know are not central apneas - I was turning over or messing with something, and "locking" my breath for some reason, but I was awake and aware. Sometimes I'm holding my breath in the middle of the night so I can listen better to some noise.

Dunno if any of this helps you much, but somebody much more knowledgeable will be by shortly. :8>)

Ed

Re: Clear Airway/Dream Mapper

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:15 am
by Okie bipap
Clear airway or central apnea is common for most people. It is very common to have clusters of them when you in a sleep transition phase, either starting to go to sleep, or starting to wake up. During those times, your breathing is not regular, and the machines registers it as clear airway. It is also common to have a few instances of CA events when sleeping.

Re: Clear Airway/Dream Mapper

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:24 am
by AliClick
Far from an expert here, but my two cents. If your post is based on a single night's results...give it some time and see what the averages are over a couple weeks. My first few nights were AHI around 9, with weird distributions of the different events. With some adjustments (thanks to feedback and info from this forum), things are falling into place. Just had my first sub-2 AHI score last night, and the first time I've actually slept until the alarm went off in months.

Ditto on the suggestions to use Sleepyhead and include your hardware in your profile. Good luck!

Re: Clear Airway/Dream Mapper

Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 11:41 am
by palerider
MichellelLindsey55 wrote:Hi all,
I was just diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea mostly having hypoapnea events. I went to a sleep clinic and they hooked me up to a million wires and I was not diagnosed with central sleep apnea. I am younger, female and slim so I was very surprised. Anyway! I just got my dream mapper machine and my data is freaking me out a little bit.

My AHI was 8.5
My Clear Airway was 21 !!
Hypoapneas 27
Obstructive Apnea was 4

What is freaking me out is the clear airway number, does this mean I have central sleep apnea? And why am I still having so many events in spite of using a cpap machine? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
well, first, don't freak out... the machine doesn't know the difference in 'real' centrals and 'fake' ones, all it knows is that you weren't breathing, but your airway wasn't closed... as mentioned, that could be because you were aroused by something else and rolled over and got comfy again.

download sleepyhead, and you can examine each one on the flow chart, thelankyleft27 on youtube has a video on how to get a good idea if it's a real central or a post arousal one.

there are also centrals that show up for some people as they transition from being awake to asleep, or vice versa, called "transitional centrals" and also referred to as "sleep wake junk" here on the forum. both post arousal and transitional centrals can safely be ignored.