Best measure of CPAP effectiveness

Does an overnight study using a WM50 at home provide a better indication of CPAP effectiveness as compared to the API values on the machines screen? Or is the average API over a week or 30 days more meaningful.

If a WM50 is an oximeter, it will tell you your oxygen levels...

API - do you mean AHI? That figure tells you how effective (to a certain extent, but not completely) your Cpap therapy is. And software like Sleepyhead will tell you that and a whole lot more. Oxygen levels are important, but far from the whole story. It's not an either/or answer tho'.

The best measure over time is how you feel, but that may take a while to achieve. Short term your AHI should go down as your therapy improves. If y our oxygen saturation levels were bad before and not so bad now, that's a good thing. In other words, be patient.

Carry On wrote:Does an overnight study using a WM50 at home provide a better indication of CPAP effectiveness as compared to the API values on the machines screen? Or is the average API over a week or 30 days more meaningful.

This is not a simple yes or no answer.

An overnight study with Ares home equipment (WM50) provides an excellent detailed look for that one night. One night only.

With most of the regular members' machines, a somewhat detailed look at CPAP effectiveness can be checked every night, night after night. This is important because how you sleep and breath and how your body responds to the CPAP therapy can be different every night. Sometimes it can be very different.

So, I would much rather be able to look at my CPAP effectiveness using my CPAP machine as compared to home sleep study equipment. Most of us have been able to optimize and monitor our CPAP therapy using our CPAP machines, and we have no need or desire for another sleep study.

But the rest of the answer depends on what data your machine has available. I am not familiar with that machine and will wait for someone else to inform us.