waking up all the time - too much pressure??

I've been back on cpap for a month now after long hiatus, with new machine Airsense 10 for her and I'm waking up every hour or so - feels like a lot of air pressure is waking me up and I find myself breathing through the mouth. When I look at machine, I'm at my maximum pressure. Do you suggest I turn down the maximum pressure in settings, or what? I have a dr. appointment in a couple weeks but don't want to wait. I'm a wreck! This is supposed to help me sleep, not make it worse, correct?

What are your settings? If you have Sleepyhead software loaded, please display some charts.

The machine wants to go to the max for a reason but that reason may not be all that critical...but without knowing what the machine is fighting we don't know if it's safe to turn the max down or not without harming your therapy.

You may be waking up when it's a higher pressure because of apnea events and it wouldn't be impossible for the apnea events to be the cause of the wake ups and it not necessarily be the pressures.

It is also possible that you are simply sensitive to the pressure changes and the least little change will disturb your sleep. You might do better with a really tight range or even a fixed pressure.

I know you are having trouble getting SleepyHead up and running right now but until you do there is some data available on the machine's LCD display.

To see that data you need to have a setting in the clinical setup menu changed to "Essentials....Plus" instead of usage.
If you don't know about the data on the screen or how to get it the manual here will explain
https://sleep.tnet.com/home/files/resme ... -guide.pdf

So until you get SleepyHead up and running let's get some data off the machine.
What mode?.....choices are cpap, auto, and auto for her
What pressure setting(s)?
What AHI is being reported?
What 95% pressure is being reported?
What leak number is being reported?
Are you using EPR? If so, at what setting?

auto for her
5-10
AHI .7
Pressure says 10 (don't see 95%)
Leak 8L/min
EPR 3

not sure how to interpret these data so appreciate your help

shaktima wrote: Pressure says 10 (don't see 95%)

the onscreen pressure number is a 95% number which means that for 95% of the time you were at OR BELOW that pressure.
Some people make the mistake of thinking that is where someone spent 95% of the night but they forget or don't understand the "or below" part of the definition.

Since your settings are 5 min and 10 max we do know that you are hitting the maximum and probably for a good bit of the night. We can't tell for sure though until we see the actual graphs.
You might be spending the bulk of the night at 9 cm or even 7 cm.
Your AHI is nice and low though. Now something not included in the AHI which might be driving the pressure would be the Flow Limitations and there's a graph for that which is shown in Sleepyhead and ResScan software (there's no Mac version of ResScan)

You could try decreasing that maximum just to see if keeping the pressure from going there hurts the AHI or helps the wake ups. Your AHI is nice and low so there's probably some wiggle room there anyway.

Ideally you need to get the software up and running to see exactly what is going on but you could still do a little tweaking based on what you do see on the LCD screen.

Your leak number is fine. It's also a 95% number and the definition is the same as with pressure "at or below".
ResMed machines report excess leak only and 24 L/min is ResMed's line in the sand where they say that therapy or reporting can be impacted. You are well below that line so even if you did have higher leaks they were short lived.

EPR of 3 means that during exhale the machine could drop 3 cm but with your 5 cm starting point it can't fully utilize the 3 cm drop because the lowest the machine will go is 4 cm.
Now once your pressure goes up to 7 you get the full 3 cm drop. Since your AHI is nice and low and you don't seem to be complaining about being air starved or suffocating then I wouldn't change EPR as long as you are comfortable with the respiration pattern you are experiencing.

You could probably try limiting the pressure to something like 8 cm and see if it helps the wake ups or not.
Watch the AHI to see if it increases though.
Ideally we need to review the software but you could do some tweaking based on the data available and how you are sleeping or feeling in general. It's not ideal but it's doable.

The biggest fly in the ointment in this situation are the flow limitations. They are a potential cause for wake ups and they aren't included in the AHI at all but they are a very important factor in what the machine will respond to and try to kill with more pressure. Flow limitations are flow reductions that don't make criteria for a full fledged apnea or hyponea event....either because the reduction isn't enough or it doesn't last at least the 10 second minimum needed to earn a flag.
The only way to evaluate the flow limitations is the software graphs. Now way around it.

So while it's possible the pressure variations are causing the wake ups...it's also possible that flow limitations or even something else we haven't thought of is the cause of the wake ups.
Doesn't hurt to try limiting that max pressure though. It's easy and cheap.
And I think you probably have some wiggle room available just in case limiting the max allows some apnea events to slip past the defenses.

Thanks Pugsy, I'll give it a try.