New to Cpap and site

Greetings,

I'm new Cpap therapy and have been on it three weeks now. I got diagnosed following having been diagnosed with Artial Fibulation. So far so good I guess. I've been compliant and switched masks a week ago. I guess my biggest question concerns my Ahi scores. My sleep study gave me an Ahi score of 27.6 my best has been 7.1 since switching masks before it was staying bouncing between 9 to 11 (most of the score are Hypoapneas). So what I'm wondering is this normal for this stage of early therapy or should the Ahi be lower. My mask leaks are 1% or less according to sleepyhead. My follow up appointment with mr sleep Doctor is at the end of month. Just wondering do I need to be patient or should I contact doc the medical supply company would only speak in general terms.

Glad I found this site

What are your pressure settings?

If the bulk of that AHI is hyponeas then you probably just need a slight pressure adjustment upwards to better prevent the airway from collapsing.

What are your settings?

If you want to share your SleepyHead reports to get some input from forum members here's how.

How to use imgur to host the images
https://sleep.tnet.com/reference/tips/imgur

for examples of what we like to see and how to organize them...see this ...there's 3 pages be sure to read them all
https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead/shorganize

For some examples
viewtopic/t103468/Need-help-with-screen-shots.html

1 % of the time in large leak isn't bad at all.

My pressure setting are 5 - 15. I'll work on getting screen prints but that will be a little bit (have to switch from iPad to pic). I asked about raising the starting ramp pressure when I got my new mask but the medical supply company said the Doctor was yo authorize it. (The screens on the machine that make those adjustments are lock out at this time).

Roy

Go here and request a copy of the provider/clinical manual for your machine.
http://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap-p ... tup-manual

It explains how to get past that "locked" thing along with some other really useful information that may not be in the user manual that came with the machine.

If you do need a pressure adjustment (and you likely do with that minimum of 5 which is kinda low) and you aren't comfortable changing it yourself...you can ask your doctor to order the change. The DME won't change it without the doctor okaying the change.

Hyponeas are usually fairly easy to deal with though...most of the time just a tiny pressure adjustment will take care of them.

If you are using the ramp feature...it starts at 4 and goes to 5...big whoopie.
I would suggest not using it since that's all the trip it takes. Now if your starting pressure was a lot higher and uncomfortable and you had to ease into it then yeah ramp might be useful then.

Ok going to try posting my sleepyhead screen shot... hopefully this works




hope this is what was requested if not let me know

roy

Looks like you inadvertently taken the screen shot while zoomed in on a little section.
Can you redo it but don't zoom in (or highlight anything)?
While you are at it...we don't need the snore graph. All we need in terms of graphs on the right are
Events
Pressure
Flow Rate
Leak
When you try to scrunch so many graphs into the image the graphs get a bit too small for optimal viewing.
Can you turn off the pie chart? Preferences/Appearance tab...remove check mark.
That way the rest of the statistics will move up into view.

ok tring the sleepyhead data post again



Hopefully this is right this time. Having issues with sleepyhead freezing up.

Anyway let me know if I need to change it.

Roy

Interesting that the pressure didn't really want to go all that high until the end of the night.
Did you maybe roll over onto your back? Usually that is the culprit when we see a significant pressure change in one long segment like that.

The clustering of hyponeas earlier in the night could be related to REM stage sleep. Some of those clusters correspond to when REM would normally occur.

I think all that is needed is maybe a small change in that minimum pressure...maybe 1 or 2 cm more minimum.
Hyponeas can sometimes be easily prevented with a small change but on occasion they can be stubborn.

The momentary spikes in the leak are very brief and really aren't going to impact the overall therapy that much.
They could impact sleep quality though.

Thanks Pugsy

I appreciate all your input and informational posts. I'll try pumping up my starting pressure a couple of points. Your post on where to find information on getting past the machine locks was very helpful along with the others. Couldn't have done it without them.

Thanks again
Roy

Based on suggestions made in this thread and others in different posts, I changed my starting pressure from 5 to 7 two nights ago since my follow up with my sleep Doctor isn't till the 27th and my Ahi was just staying in the high 7's at best. The first night after changing was 7.8 again but last night it was down to 3.8 lowest I've ever had (of course I've only been at this 29 days) but I had the best nights sleep yet. So I just wanted to share the positive step and hopefully it continues.

Thanks
Roy