Bi-Level different after sleep study

Curious if anyone has noticed their machine with current settings feels different after doing a new study?

I had a sleep study Tues night. For it, I was told to bring in my machine, mask hose and power connectors. Wasn't sure why originally until I go there.

When I got there, they said they would use my current mask for the study when I got to part titration part and that while I was sleeping they would test the settings on the machine with a tester to make sure that machine was working properly etc.. Sounded okay to me.

Before the study started and I got all hooked up, she had me lie down with my mask and a hose they provided to their machine to make sure it was fitting correctly and there were no problems. She didn't like the leak rate of my mask at all. First the settings in the machine were taken from my first sleep study 8yrs ago and are pretty high, not the settings on my machine that I have been using for the past 6 years. The mask started to leak badly and making all kinds of sounds that reminded me back of what it was when I very first started. She stopped and I explained that those settings were only used when I slept on my back and when they found I didn't do that, they had the RX changed to lower pressures which is what I have been using ever since.

She adjusted the settings to what my current machine was using and the mask was fine, no leaks etc.. except she said the leak rate was too high still. Not from around my face I could tell that, but apparently the mask itself's exhaust was too high. Okay, I have heard comments similar before about the mask...

So she got me a different mask, a Quattro and adjusted it and it was okay. Different but no leaks and she said the leak rate now was in the acceptable area for the study.

So I did the study, first without the mask Ugh! and then finally with the mask. Seemed fine, have no idea what the pressures ended up being but I will find out soon enough and I was done and went home.

When I got home, I took a shower to get rid of the markings, paste in my beard etc... did some stuff I had to do for work, re setup my machine and took a nap to catch up on the sleep I didn't get that night.

The very first thing I noted was when I exhaled, it seems like the push from the machine was backing off too much. I didn't think of it much and slept about 3-1/2 hours. got up and worked from home the rest of the day.

That night when I went to sleep again, again I had the feeling like when I was exhaling that the machine was backing off and not pushing as hard as I recall. Again, I fell asleep fairly quickly and slept about 7.5 hours until I woke up.

At this point I wasn't sure if the machine had its setting changed or if the during the study I got used to a higher exhale pressure and "liked it"..

So tonight before going to bed, I pulled the machine out and put it in settings mode and went over the Epap and Ipap settings.. Everything appeared to be as it was before. It has been a long time since I've looked at it, but the settings matched what I had written down a long time ago.

So I adjusted the Min-Epap up .5 cm, turned off the settings, put the mask on and tested it and it was better. I then upped it again by another .5 cm and it felt even better still. I also found that there was a ramp of .10 ?? not sure if that is 10 seconds or minutes but I always thought the ramp was off. So set it to 0. And again tested it for about 10 mins and it seems fine. Also found that BiFlex was set to 3 not 1 like I thought it was. I set it back down to 1.

I will find out tonight when I actually go to sleep (shortly).

Curious if others have felt their machine was different after going through a study? The tech said they were not allowed to change the patient machine settings and I am pretty sure she didn't. It might also have been the different mask used that night which had less leak flow?? Not sure. But the two times I used it after the study, in the beginning it clearly felt like exhaling was not getting the pressure high enough.

She did say the machine was cleaner than most she sees especially for the age and that I was missing the white filter that is supposed to go before the foam filter in the back (I don't ever recall having the white one). Machine is 6yrs old.

Why did you have a study? Can't you manage your own therapy better than strangers can manage it?

White filters are for people who have definite allergies (whether just to dust or other things), and only those people use them... well, I suppose others do too, but they're not strictly necessary.

ChicagoGranny wrote:Why did you have a study? Can't you manage your own therapy better than strangers can manage it?

My machine is 6years old and I want a new one.

I can't get Insurance to buy a new machine without a sleep study. the last was 8 years ago and I don't have a full copy of it, just a copy where I had redacted my name to post to a forum. I have not seen any Dr related to my BiPap usage since the original sleep study. it is doubtful the Insurance would have accepted the 8 year old study if I had it in full anyway.

I don't plan on buying one out of my own pocket. This summer has already been too expensive already and I won't have any deductible to pay for the new machine as I have spent the max already this year.

Respironics considers the white filter behind the gray foam filter "optional". Personally...I don't consider it optional as I have seen how nasty it gets after a month. It's just an extra layer of filtration.....for both you and the machines inner guts.

I don't know that you will find many people here who have had a sleep study using their own machine to compare the before and after to. It is just not a common occurrence for someone to take their own machine to a sleep study.
If the BiFlex setting was changed...that's enough to make it "feel" different.
When we use some sort of setting for a long time our body gets used to having things "feel" a certain way and something as little as a change in the BiFlex setting can be noticed.

Just a followup on the settings change I made last night.

Worked great. I have not looked at the data yet, but I slept fine last night.

[quote="Krelvin"
She did say the machine was cleaner than most she sees especially for the age and that I was missing the white filter that is supposed to go before the foam filter in the back (I don't ever recall having the white one). Machine is 6yrs old.[/quote]

white filter goes in first, fuzzy side out, and then the foam filter goes in.