high pressure on auto while awake

during spouse's sleep study titration, was found to have central apneas induced over 10cm. md requested desensitizing airway to stop this. he started on 7cm with cpap f&P sleepstyle with a full face mask..unable to use any other mask..nose,pillow,hybrid..due to extreme dry mouth. was able to get to 9cm before air drowning, so dme suggested auto titration. first nigh great around 8cm with api of 9, second night a hurricane at 18 with 29 api and had to shut it off after 2 hours.. third night air flow at 11 even before sleep ..couldnt handle it, knowing it would go higher during sleep..shut off and went back to cpap at 8cm. dme thought maybe bipap titration. any suggestions on why such high pressure while awake? wont bipap be over 8cm inhale also ? which is all he can handle? if infact his airway needs a higher pressure ..is 8cm doing anything? is it worth the time, effort and expense? thanks for your help

neb wrote:during spouse's sleep study titration, was found to have central apneas induced over 10cm. md requested desensitizing airway to stop this. he started on 7cm with cpap f&P sleepstyle with a full face mask..unable to use any other mask..nose,pillow,hybrid..due to extreme dry mouth. was able to get to 9cm before air drowning, so dme suggested auto titration. first nigh great around 8cm with api of 9, second night a hurricane at 18 with 29 api and had to shut it off after 2 hours.. third night air flow at 11 even before sleep ..couldnt handle it, knowing it would go higher during sleep..shut off and went back to cpap at 8cm. dme thought maybe bipap titration. any suggestions on why such high pressure while awake? wont bipap be over 8cm inhale also ? which is all he can handle? if infact his airway needs a higher pressure ..is 8cm doing anything? is it worth the time, effort and expense? thanks for your help

That "MD" is sounds scary to me. And, I'm wondering WHY the DME would be, in essence, "prescribing" an auto titration rather than the doctor. This whole scenario is just plain weird.

I would strongly suggest doing a Google search on "Central Sleep Apnea" and start reading.

I'd get a copy of the whole sleep study and look it over.

By the way, a person doesn't breathe the same when they're awake as when they're asleep.....so that can make a machine change (raise) pressures differently than what would happen while asleep. Some of it depends on WHICH machine they were using and how it was set up.

Den