Events per hour

Good Morning,
Is anyone concerned about their events per hour? I have a great many nights when my event number is between 4 and 5 a night, and only an occasional night of no events. I am told by some that I shouldn't pay so much attention to these numbers. Admittedly, I do sometimes fixate on them.


elena

Rule of thumb is that if you are averaging less than 5 events per hour, you are ok. Most people that use a CPAP average less than that. The key is how you are sleeping and how you are feeling. If you have 4 or 5 events per NIGHT...you are doing GREAT.

LSAT wrote:Rule of thumb is that if you are averaging less than 5 events per hour, you are ok. .

5 per hour is a pretty low bar, if you think about it, hard to get restful sleep if you're being waked up every 12 minutes (on average).

it feels like that target is set more on a 'well, it'll keep 'em living' basis, as opposed to 'this'll be good for 'em'

It's a balancing act that depends on things like how well you are tolerating the treatment pressure and if increasing the pressure would cause problems or not. If your pressure is not high enough to cause you problems with air in the belly, mask leaks, or triggering central apneas, why not go for the best numbers you can get? That's where the balancing act comes in - getting the best treatment with the least problems. Some have decided to accept a few more events to avoid side effects. If in a sleep lab you had under 5 events per hour, you probably wouldn't have been prescribed a machine unless your oxygen level wasn't maintained. If you could give us details, if you're interested, you could get some input on steps to take to be sure your treatment is optimized.

Events per hour as reported by a home treatment machine may not necessarily even be real events. The numbers reported by home-treatment machine are provided only for use in trending--comparing one period of time with another--not for judging how effective the treatment is for any given night.

Home-treatment machines have no way of knowing whether or not any change in your breathing has affected your sleep. So, although the numbers can be particularly valuable in some circumstances, my suggestion would be, if your sleep is much improved, do not misuse the estimates of your home-treatment machine by making those numbers a cause for unfounded worry.

If the numbers worried me, I might post some screenshots here to get the opinion of other patients on whether the numbers appeared to indicate anything out of the ordinary.