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So here is my SleepyHead screen shot from last night. I am following the prescribed pressure of 9 and not using the Auto any longer. I know the results look very busy but I don't feel bad and got a restful 9 plus hours sleep last night. I used to worry about getting my AHI to zero but I don't these days. Is this typical for you, too? I have been using therapy since October.

http://imgur.com/a/R9bC2

I don't get much lower after a couple years, and I messed with my settings a lot, as suggested by fellow forum'ers. I don't obsess about not being under 1, and if I get a night of 5 to 8, I also ignore. So, yes, you seem to have fine numbers.

Do you feel that you are having effective treatment?

Let me ask you this other question - do you remember 'that you were dreaming' once you woke up (either at night or in the morning)?

Do you feel less happy or more happy about how you slept on the nights you were dreaming?

Thanks for the info.

GGF

Jasba64 wrote:So here is my SleepyHead screen shot from last night. I am following the prescribed pressure of 9 and not using the Auto any longer. I know the results look very busy but I don't feel bad and got a restful 9 plus hours sleep last night. I used to worry about getting my AHI to zero but I don't these days. Is this typical for you, too? I have been using therapy since October.

From looking at your reports, if it were me, I'd move the pressure up to 10 and see how that works for about a week. If the numbers go down, you know you're going in the right direction. If they don't, you can always go back.
Your "numbers" are in the acceptable range, but they might get better with a little tweaking.


Den

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I played around with my pressure until I finally settled on 20 cm H2O with 3 cm pressure support. I stayed at 17 for several months, but my hypopnea rate was staying around 1.5 and my maximum flow limits were staying around 0.5. Now, my AHI is normally under 1 after I take out the sleep/wake junk, and my maximum flow limit seldom go over 0.25.

I do dream some crazy stuff. Sometimes I remember and other times, not. I see my Sleep Doctor soon so I wanted some data at this pressure to show him. After that, I most likely will play with settings a little. I don't wake up near as often with this 9 pressure. I had my AHI very low prior to this but I woke up a lot throughout the night.

Hi, Since past year or so my other half and kids are complaining that I am snoring loud and they can't sleep. And there were incidents that my wife mentioned that I was gasping for air in the middle of night. So, I bought a Pulsoximeter to do overnight studies at home and generated a report using SpO2 Assistant but, not sure how to read it. Can someone help me understand if I have sleep apnea if so how bad, and do I need to see doc for this? Thanks for all help.

Here is my SpO2 Report for 04/17/2017
http://imgur.com/a/HCXYX

krish wrote:Hi, Since past year or so my other half and kids are complaining that I am snoring loud and they can't sleep. And there were incidents that my wife mentioned that I was gasping for air in the middle of night. So, I bought a Pulsoximeter to do overnight studies at home and generated a report using SpO2 Assistant but, not sure how to read it. Can someone help me understand if I have sleep apnea if so how bad, and do I need to see doc for this? Thanks for all help.

Here is my SpO2 Report for 04/17/2017
http://imgur.com/a/HCXYX

I'm not an expert at reading pulse-ox graphs, but here are the things that I notice in your pulsoximeter data:

1) The pulse-ox detected a total of 39 O2 desats in the 9 hours you slept with it. The pulse-ox you use defines an O2 desat as a drop in the SpO2 level of 4% or greater that lasts for at least 10 seconds. Each one of those 39 desats was most likely a real obstructive apnea or a real hypopnea.

2) The average length of your desat events is 41.3 seconds. In other words, when your O2 dropped by 4% it stayed low for an average of 41.3 seconds before returning to normal. That's on the long side---it's four times longer than the minimum time required to score an event.

3) Your calculated O2 desat index is 4.3 = (39 events)/(9 hours of "sleep"). While that technically makes it look like you might not have OSA or might only have "mild" OSA, it's worth noting that some people with OSA have events that do NOT involve substantial O2 desats. The American Sleep Medicine Association has two different definitions of "hypopnea", and one of them does not require a desat of 4% or more---an EEG arousal combined with decreased airflow is enough to score a hypopnea. It's also possible to have a full obstructive apnea without an associated desat. So the fact that your O2 desat index is just below 5.0 is NOT enough (in my opinion) to rule out OSA.

4) In eight of your 39 events, the SpO2 dropped below 88%. That's serious enough to warrant being investigated with a real sleep test.

5) Your min SpO2 was 84%, which is very low. Low enough to warrant being properly investigated with a real sleep test.

In conclusion, I think your SpO2 data indicates that you need a real sleep test. It could be that you have "mild" OSA in terms of number of events, but many of your events are really severe events---in other words, a quarter of your events in this test lead to SpO2 levels below 88%, which is considered significant. It also is the case that the events you have that result in O2 desats are also prolonged---they last 41 seconds on average. Given that the Pulse-ox may not be catching all your events since some obstructive events do not have associated O2 desats and the reports of exceptionally loud snoring, I think a real sleep test is needed to determine the real severity of your sleep apnea.

I would get a sleep test with those numbers.
If you are self funded or out of pocket is too much, you could buy a used auto cpap with a sd data card and use sleepyhead to see if the cpap is doing the job. with the spo2 data as well, it will give a good idea as to what's going on.

krish wrote:Hi, Since past year or so my other half and kids are complaining that I am snoring loud and they can't sleep. And there were incidents that my wife mentioned that I was gasping for air in the middle of night. So, I bought a Pulsoximeter to do overnight studies at home and generated a report using SpO2 Assistant but, not sure how to read it. Can someone help me understand if I have sleep apnea if so how bad, and do I need to see doc for this? Thanks for all help.

whether you have apnea or not, you have a problem, and that needs treatment.

heavy snoring is bad for everyone, it physiologically disturbs your sleep, and disturbs the sleep of everybody around you. that in and of itself is more than enough reason to either buy a machine and treat yourself, or go through the regular process of sleep studies.

To original poster -

The way you describe your dreaming, I gather it does not make you anxious or less-happy. In my opinion, your treatment sounds like it is just fine the way it is.

GGF

Jasba64 wrote:So here is my SleepyHead screen shot from last night. I am following the prescribed pressure of 9 and not using the Auto any longer. I know the results look very busy but I don't feel bad and got a restful 9 plus hours sleep last night. I used to worry about getting my AHI to zero but I don't these days. Is this typical for you, too? I have been using therapy since October.

http://imgur.com/a/R9bC2

On the chart you are showing us, your machine is still set on Auto with min 11 and Max 17.

LSAT wrote:

Jasba64 wrote:So here is my SleepyHead screen shot from last night. I am following the prescribed pressure of 9 and not using the Auto any longer. I know the results look very busy but I don't feel bad and got a restful 9 plus hours sleep last night. I used to worry about getting my AHI to zero but I don't these days. Is this typical for you, too? I have been using therapy since October.

http://imgur.com/a/R9bC2

On the chart you are showing us, your machine is still set on Auto with min 11 and Max 17.

No. He's got 21 nights worth of data/reports posted with a variety of pressure settings.
I think he still needs a little more pressure, judging from the last few nights.


Den

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