New to Cpap Hope to learn

Hello to All. Have been lurking here for a little while. This looks like a very good forum.
A little background. 62 yr. old male. I had open heart surgery to replace my Aortic valve with a mechanical valve in March.
One month later I had an overnight sleep study and consequently a 3 week trial. I was diagnosed with moderate SleepApnea.
My GP doc looked at results and urged me to continue. So .now I have my own new machine and mask. Philips Respironics and F&P Simplus full face mask.
This was a whirlwind affair as I was in some heavy recovery mode from the Open Heart surgery, so i could have cared less about some mask and settings.
As a side effect my new mechanical valve produces an extremely loud thump and pulse in my ears such that I could not sleep. Subsequently I was put on sleeping pills(Zopiclone).
I have been using my Machine nightly now for the past week.
I must be honest I dont know a lot about it .
Initially setting was 4 and 9.5
Currently the settings are 6.5 and 12.
I am using the full face mask comfortably for full night.
I have done a quite a bit of reading to learn terminology etc. of this new world.
I am hoping to attach a couple of links from Sleepyhead for comment by the gurus of the board.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/24fywfgyywo4w ... 8.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/drdyzi3dhgx5i ... 6.png?dl=0

The second one is better, but you set the pressure for a bad night. I would try 10 - 15 and see how that goes. You will be able to readjust as your body gets use to cpap and everything settles down. Hopefully the bad nights are few and far between.

The June 21 night looks really good. Why did you lower the minimum pressure on the June 22 night? Did you have problems of some sort?
June 22 is showing 5 minimum and 12 maximum. June 21 is showing 6.5 and 12 max.

Only thing I would do is either give the June 21 settings more time or maybe try minimum of 7.0 just to see if the FLs reduce a little but they aren't horrible as they are.

I see no need to increase the max past 12 if you never hit 12...now if you start seeing quite a bit of time maxed out at 12 then increase the pressure a little.
Your choice on that. The machine won't go up without what it thinks is a good reason to go up.

I see no need at all to go to minimum of 10. Way over kill on the minimum IMHO. Those few FLs won't need that much more minimum to kill them and there's essentially nothing else to kill with more minimum. AHI is very, very low...nothing to kill.

Whatever you choose to use you need to not change anything for a few days to establish a pattern. We don't sleep the same way each night and when you go changing things all over the place you can't get a feel for any trends.

You might want to fix the links. The way you have it now they are broken because of a space in the https part of the url.

Thanks for the reply. I to noticed the pressure had changed to 5 from 6.5. Now either I did that unintentionally or it was change remotely through the installed modem. More than likely it was the former reason, my bad. I had changed the minimum back to 6.5 after seeing the sleepy head this morning.
I will try that again tonight. I did not mention that I sleep with a soft collar on. I have used it for a lot of my life to avoid sore neck and back.
Can the results be affected by taking a sleep aid. It is quite strong and really knocks you out.
I had purposely left a space in the links since it was my first post. Maybe I was wrong but I had read somewhere that I needed 4 posts before I could post the links.
Could be I was mixed up with another site, who knows.

Here are the Sleepyhead results from last night.
Pressures were set back to June 21 values.
My thoughts are to leave the setting as is and try for a few nights.
I welcome any comments or suggestions


https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0jzu2q9m5zni ... dl=0Thanks

Looks pretty good.. nothing unusual.

What 'sleep aid' do you use and how strong? It certainly can make a difference depending on what it is... have you actually tried not using it (or cutting down slowly) since being on Cpap?

I would be thinking of trying minimum of 7.0 at some time in the very near future if last night's results (and the 21st) still show the FLs and snores even with a really low AHI.
The FLs aren't part of the AHI and their presence indicates the airway is trying to collapse but just didn't make it to earn a hyponea or OA flag.

You hit max of 12 briefly last night and didn't the other night so something changed for the machine to want to go higher. If you see this happening very often you might want to increase the max a bit.
As to why some nights and not others...dunno but probably related to sleeping position. I suspect you were on your back during those times and simply needed more pressure. Might also be related to REM stage sleep where it is also common for us to need more pressure....or heck maybe a combination of sleeping on your back and REM.

The sleep aid is called Zopiclone(7.5 mg). For now I have to take one at bedtime. I sleep on my back with very
little change in position for the night. In due course as my mental and physical condition improve I will hopefully be able to wean off the drugs.

Thanks Pugsy for your comments. I will set the minimum pressure to 7 for tonight.

Do you know that back sleeping provokes many more apneas - even if some are addressed by Cpap?

I always used to sleep on my side, for 62 years I think. Due to the sternotomy for open heart surgery I am not yet able to sleep on my side. Perhaps another
month or more yet. I do look forward to returning to "normal" sleep habits and position.

Sleep in whatever position you are most comfortable in. If it's on your back then sleep on your back. While it is common that supine sleeping can cause more collapsing of the airway tissues and even more pressure than side sleeping...it's not something that happens to everyone and even if it did you have a machine that can deal with any increased in apnea events needing more pressure...that's why we have auto adjusting machines.
Just have the minimum pressure set optimally and let the machine deal with whatever it has to deal with.
You gotta get the sleep first and if you can't sleep comfortably in any other position than on your back right now the so be it. The machine can handle it and by the looks of your reports it looks like it is handling things quite well.

xxyzx wrote:woweee

and now pugsy agrees with me about auto machines

Ahhh...but you have it backwards. I was here first...you get to agree with me.
Don't go trying to mislead people saying I agree with you because it's just something else that you don't state the full facts clearly.
You just happen to agree with something I have been saying for probably 8 years now. Don't get all puffed up thinking that you changed my thinking because you sure as hell didn't.

Pugsy wrote:The June 21 night looks really good. Why did you lower the minimum pressure on the June 22 night? Did you have problems of some sort?
June 22 is showing 5 minimum and 12 maximum. June 21 is showing 6.5 and 12 max.

Only thing I would do is either give the June 21 settings more time or maybe try minimum of 7.0 just to see if the FLs reduce a little but they aren't horrible as they are.

I see no need to increase the max past 12 if you never hit 12...now if you start seeing quite a bit of time maxed out at 12 then increase the pressure a little.
Your choice on that. The machine won't go up without what it thinks is a good reason to go up.

I see no need at all to go to minimum of 10. Way over kill on the minimum IMHO. Those few FLs won't need that much more minimum to kill them and there's essentially nothing else to kill with more minimum. AHI is very, very low...nothing to kill.

Whatever you choose to use you need to not change anything for a few days to establish a pattern. We don't sleep the same way each night and when you go changing things all over the place you can't get a feel for any trends.

You might want to fix the links. The way you have it now they are broken because of a space in the https part of the url.

perhaps you missed significant pegging out on 12, the max pressure that was set in the first chart? I like to set my machine for a bad night, it also covers a good night. I guess it depends how often the bad nights are.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/24fywfgyywo4w ... 8.png?dl=0

ajack wrote:perhaps you missed significant pegging out on 12, the max pressure that was set in the first chart?

No...didn't miss it at all. That was the night where the minimum was 5 and that's too low and not optimal....So that report pretty much got discarded because the 5 was an accident.

Here's the thing with the minimum pressure...often if the minimum is more optimally set then the pressure doesn't even go so high.
With the other reports where the minimum was 6.5 it barely kissed 12 max on one night and didn't come close the other night.

I have seen it many, many times where apaps go higher when the minimum is too low but set the minimum more optimally and the max pressures come way down.
The machines don't have to work so hard when in prevent mode instead of fix it mode.

There was a case about a year ago where the person was seeing max of 18 and 19 all the time and the minimum was way too low (I think the settings were 5 min and 20 max) and the AHI was in the teens. Obviously way too low of a minimum pressure. We were kinda worried that she might need bilevel with those maximums but we increased the minimum to around 10 or 11 I think it was and the max pressure came down to 14...never went above 14 after that.

I think that is probably what the OP in this thread will see happen. I think with the better minimum that he won't reach 12 very often and if he does it will be very brief.
Now if I had seen him spend a lot of time at 12 with the 6.5 minimum...yeah for sure bump that maximum up but I would be really surprised if it needs to be higher.

So I did see the maxing out at 12 but since it was with the 5 minimum and I didn't see it with the 6.5 minimum except for one or two tiny kisses up there I see no urgent reason to raise the max. Of course it wouldn't hurt anything to increase the max because the machine won't go up there without a good reason but it also doesn't hurt anything to leave it at 12 if it never goes there anyway.

xxyzx wrote:i was not the one saying you were wrong

it was julie tadumbass and guest who keep saying everything i saw is wrong
now you have proved twice that i was correct and they were FOS

News flash....you are acting like a spoiled little 2 year old and anything remotely constructive you might offer is being way over shadowed by your small minded name calling crap tirades. Keep it up...whatever intelligent things you might come up with are being smothered by your inability to not say something snarky and all you are doing is showing everyone how little you really know and what a limited vocabulary you have.

I haven't proved you were correct on anything...you just happened to agree with me on a couple of items. There's a big difference.

Keep it up. You are doing a really good job of proving that you are what a lot of us think you are. And it isn't the big smart intelligent man you think you are. It's a small minded spoiled man/child who thinks he knows everything and really knows very little and stoops to name calling because he can't come up with anything better.

And with that...back on the Foe list you go because you aren't worth my time. The only reason I cheated and peeked here was because it was a thread from a newbie and I wanted to make sure you weren't spouting off some garbage that might hurt someone.