How to measure faces...

It keeps occurring to me that if we had a way or comparing basic facial shapes and sizes we could get a little more scientific on advising newbies on mask types.

I have a very narrow nose (17mm in eyeglass speak) and cannot use most FFMs above about 12 cms as they can't seal on the bridge and nasal masks just block my bridge 100%.

Is there a system of face measurement somewhere we can steal to start comparing notes on what ended up being the best mask for some basic facial "types"? I think bridge width, nose height and nostril size are pretty obvious - what else?

Resmed will send you plastic templates. Also, they may have print out templates... can't remember. Go to the website.

Sheriff

I have seen those to choose a size, but not a mask. Are there ways to choose masks? Their advice page is not much help and is missing the new "x"10 line completely.

I wish there was a database of 3D imaging of faces that fit certain masks to which one could compare their own 3D image.
The software exists, but if any mask company adopts it, the DB will probably be fudged to use only their own masks;
--whether or not the results are reliable; and the process made proprietary so it can not be used across mask platforms.
Life sucks!

So cpap.com should do it - they sell all major brands... no?

Mask insurance is probably cheaper and simpler--even when free. (but mostly for US residents)
Our Canadian friends could use such a service, since 30 days is often insufficient for them.

That sounds like a fantastic idea.

I hate having to be redundant but I notice when you are around here for a few week as i have been, many of the same bits of info are repeated quite often so here we go again and i apologize ahead of time for anyone having read anything more than once.

That said, all I can tell you from my experience, and my DME was that she took ONE look at me, for all of 2 seconds, and noticed that I had an angular heart shaped face. Pretty easy to distinguish if you are in the habit of looking at faces.
Its heart shaped with high cheekbones ( British/Norwegian bone structure) so from this she Very quickly determined, as a mouth breather, A) I needed a FF mask and because in her opinion, that QUATTRO AIR FF mask works best on an angular face, as opposed to one that is round, moon shaped, rectangular, etc, she gave it to me.

From all I have read, it seems to me that everyone seems to have problems finding a mask that fits yet my DME got it right, right off the mark

Unfortunately in my case,2 months were wasted listening to very bad advice from someone on the other sleep apnea forum
The day RobySue told me to turn my machine to a certain number and go back to the FF mask, it worked perfectly .That was 15 days ago and its been perfect since.

So it proves a point that there are some DMEs that do pay attention to the face shape and know what to give a person.
IF ONE can do it, any of them can IF they wish to care enough to try.

Therefore, they should be able to do it with just recognizing the shape of a persons face.
Maybe it becomes harder if a face has a lot of chins or fat on it?
Then maybe its harder but the basic shape of the face is still distinguishable....

As for mask insurance, a great idea and i wasn't aware that the Americans had it but here in Canada, unfortunately we seem to be behind a few years on everything that would be useful to us that the Americans have.
For example, we only started with cell phone insurance in the past 6 months.
Now you can pay a price monthly so if your cell phone is lost, falls into water and is ruined, etc, with insurance you will get your phone replaced immediately.
I believe Americans have had that choice for several years.
We are always behind ;(

englandsf wrote:
I have a very narrow nose (17mm in eyeglass speak) and cannot use most FFMs above about 12 cms as they can't seal on the bridge and nasal masks just block my bridge 100%.

Your comparison to eyeglass measurement is great! I hadn't thought about the fact that I have that measurement already, literally right in front of me. I seem to be doing better with a nasal mask so this is a good reference.

And, now that I am wearing my glasses I've stopped replacing the letter "a" in faces with the letter "e".