Numbers, what's good/bad?

I have EncorePro up and running and now need some education on what constitutes good numbers and bad numbers. Are there any documents, courses, etc, that do a decent job of doing that?

I understand that an AHI of less than 5 is desirable, but that's about all I have found by reading posts and doing searches.

For example what is the difference between an AHI and a AHI index? I have different numbers for them.

Other questions: The machine LCD reports a 7 day ave leak rate of 48 L/m. The intentional leak rate of my mask is 44 L/m. So my unintentional leak rate is 4 L/m. Is that good?

EncorePro Analyzer reports a lot of snores but my wife says I no longer snore at all - none. How come?

Any help would be appreciated.

AHI = Apnea/Hypopnea Index = sum of (apneas per hour + hypopneas per hour).

Leak rate is good for your full face mask.

Other noises made by your movements during your sleep can sometimes be misinterpreted as snores by machine ... not worry about it.

Welcome to the club and best wishes.

DreamStalker,
Thanks for the info.

Looking back at my post I see that I meant to ask what the difference between AH and AHI was.
I now understand that AH is the total number of events while the AHI is the number of events per hour.

I did a bunch of web related research and found info scattered all over the place.
I think I now have a pretty good feel for the terms and definitions.

Still haven't found out how the fact that an AHI of less than 5 is okay has been determined. There must have been some studies done. Maybe comparing the AHI for the population as a whole to the number that have have a AHI higher than 5.
It would be interesting to see what the distribution is.

As someone told me here earlier, don't worry about the daily AHI since you can have a bad night occasionally. Look at the right column for average AHI.

Fudge, I don't know an URL to send you to but research has provided the basis for the criteria for diagnosis of sleep apnea or OSA to be an AHI of >5.0 plus a few other things I don't remember well enough to refer to having to do with time length, etc.

Slinky wrote:Fudge, I don't know an URL to send you to but research has provided the basis for the criteria for diagnosis of sleep apnea or OSA to be an AHI of >5.0 plus a few other things I don't remember well enough to refer to having to do with time length, etc.

*or* a lower AHI accompanied by certain other symptoms like severe desaturations, extremely high blood pressure, really bad excessive daytime sleepiness, etc.

ClayL, my sleep doctor told me "Stop focusing so much on the numbers. How do you feel?"

As for your snore question, EncorePro is infamous for marking things like the hose moving, rolling over and rubbing the mask on the bed, etc., as snores. So you may still be snoring but more quietly, or you may just be causing vibrations some other way.

tillymarigold At this point I am not really concerned about the numbers, just interested in learning as much as I can about them. We engineers do tend to be number people..

In about three months we will be back in the town where the sleep doc I used is , and I will see him then. He can worry about my numbers.

But, regarding how I feel - most of the time great all day and sometimes sleepy during the day.
I think I am most of the way there but not quite all the way.

I have a couple of thoughts on why an AHI of at least 5 is considered a criterion for the prescription of treatment for sleep apnea.

William Dement, in his book "The Promise of Sleep," describes many experiments that his lab has conducted. One of those experiments found that a period of sleep must last at least 15 minutes if it is to contribute to a reduction in sleep debt. If you are aroused by apneas say just 4 times per hour (every 15 minutes on average) then your sleep isn't working off your sleep debt. I don't know about everyone else, but in my sleep study 70% of my apneas and hypopneas caused arousals. So for me, I need my AHI to be less than approximately 4/0.70 = 5.6 in order to have my average sleep period be longer than 15 minutes.

My sleep doctor told me that CPAP will correct the apneas at a slight cost to overall sleep quality. He estimated that cost to be 10-15%. If CPAP is to improve one's overall quality of sleep then it must help at least as much as it hurts. We who have been helped greatly by CPAP tend not to consider the side effects as being deleterious, but the dude who only reduces his AHI from 6 to 4 certainly would. So sleep apnea has to be "bad enough" in order for treatment to be an improvement. Perhaps, this is also part of the reason why an AHI of 5 is chosen when deciding on prescribing treatment.

I'd also be interested in any more info on this topic - specifically scientific references.

NarcoApneac wrote:I have a couple of thoughts on why an AHI of at least 5 is considered a criterion for the prescription of treatment for sleep apnea.

Interesting post. Thanks for the info!

DreamStalker wrote:Other noises made by your movements during your sleep can sometimes be misinterpreted as snores by machine ... not worry about it.

I can testify to that. My husband says not a peep of snoring and yet the vibratory snore number was really high one night. I think when I clear my throat it interprets it as a snore.