Picked up my sleep study results from hospital!

What does this mean...

The patient appears to benefit from cpap at 12 cm of water with cflex+3

I will be ordering from cpap.com today. Done with messing with Apria. Going to get the resumed airsense for her. Also that night I wore the resmed mirage nasal mask and liked it, so I will get that as well.

CPAP at 12 cm water is a prescription recommendation for Constant Positive Air Pressure at 12 centimeters equivalent water pressure. That is the amount of pressure needed to displace water at 12 cm in a magnahelic gauge (4.7 inches water column or 0.17 PSI).

Got ya. Is the flex3+ a hose or something?

Melanndoll wrote:Got ya. Is the flex3+ a hose or something?

Flex is the Respironics trademark for their version of exhale pressure relief. When you exhale, it reduces the air pressure to make it easier for you exhale and it may help with some other problems.

The ResMed machines don't have Flex, but they have EPR, which is similar.

Flex and EPR are settings on the machine, not something you order separately.

So what would a recommended range be for me?

I'm so mad at myself for messing around with Apria for 3 weeks and I could have had my machine in one day from cpap.com!

Often the CPAP RX at so and so pressure is a "worst case scenario" pressure and sometimes it's just way off (mine was from my titration study) so it's hard to say what that would equate to in terms of an apap range but if a person sets apap 2 cm below and 2 cm above the CPAP RX it is usually a good starting point.
So in this situation 10 cm minimum and 14 cm maximum if using APAP mode....or try cpap mode at 12 since that is the RX and maybe they got it right. Mine wasn't right because during my titration study I didn't get but a few minutes of REM sleep and in REM sleep I often need more pressure so once I got home and sleeping and got more REM the 8cm from the titration study wasn't cutting it either in cpap mode or as an APAP mode minimum pressure...but it was a good starting point and with just a little tweaking of the pressures I was able to optimize the settings easily.

Thank you all! I'm so excited!

I'm not sure how CFLEX (the Repironics approach to making it easier to breathe out) compares to EPR (the Resmed approach), but I suspect that setting the EPR to 3 would give you a similar result.

Do you recommend setting the range from 10-14 on night one? Or keep the 4-20? I didn't know if it's better to start out on a lower pressure to get used to it?

Good luck to you!

Melanndoll wrote:Do you recommend setting the range from 10-14 on night one? Or keep the 4-20? I didn't know if it's better to start out on a lower pressure to get used to it?

I would set the lower pressure at 9 or 10 l/H2O. If that setting is too high (comfort-wise) you can lower it, but it will take the machine a little longer to treat an apnea event.

Leave the upper number at 20. That way the machine will go as high as it needs to treat an apnea event.

Give a setting several days... maybe at least a week to get good results. Download sleep head here (for free) and track your results. We'll help you with your numbers. Meanwhile... educate yourself here. It looks as if you are getting a good start on taking charge of your health.

Sheriff

You can use the 10 to 14 setting like Pugsy said above and for a lower starting pressure use you ramp at say 5 for 15 mins. That way it gradually builds up to 10. At some point later you may want raise or turn off the ramp. The EPR setting is your exhalation Relief. With a range that is closer to your 12 pressure titration setting you will have less pressure variations and possible better sleep.
You still need to evaluate this with sleepyhead to see if changes need to be made.