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In 2007 I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, and was prescribed a CPAP which I used for about a little less than year. After much research and deliberation I decided to have bariatric surgery. Four months after surgery I found I no longer needed my CPAP.

I have a RES MED Escape II with humidifier and a couple of masks which I own. I don't know if it is possible to sell, here or elsewhere. Does anyone know? I paid more than $500 for this, and I would like to recoup a little of it, and make it easier for someone else who was diagnosed as I was and can't afford a "new" one.

You had a sleep study to confirm this? Just curious.

That surgery (alone) is known to eliminate apnea along with diabetes and a couple of other problems.

resmed user wrote:In 2007 I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, and was prescribed a CPAP which I used for about a little less than year. After much research and deliberation I decided to have bariatric surgery. Four months after surgery I found I no longer needed my CPAP.

I have a RES MED Escape II with humidifier and a couple of masks which I own. I don't know if it is possible to sell, here or elsewhere. Does anyone know? I paid more than $500 for this, and I would like to recoup a little of it, and make it easier for someone else who was diagnosed as I was and can't afford a "new" one.

There's a cpap auction site, maybe try there?

Can you tell us your height and weight before the surgery, and your weight when you were confirmed to no longer have sleep apnea?

Thanks and congratulations on your new, healthier life!

I did not say it was not possible for this surgery to help with sleep apnea and I am sure it helps with many other conditions as well. But with conditions such as diabetes, you would check your blood sugar, etc and you would have quantitative information to support that you no longer had diabetes or needed to change the treatment strategy. The statement "I found I no longer needed CPAP" just makes me wonder what criteria were used to determine that this is the case.

If the CPAP is no longer needed, that is fantastic news! And any change to lead a healthier life should be applauded!

Swimming in DeNile also is said to be a cure for Sleep Apnea. Jim PsTT, it's called drowning in DeNile.

I would like to recoup a little of it, and make it easier for someone else who was diagnosed as I was and can't afford a "new" one

Im sure there are many folks who get diagnosed who cant afford a new machine.

Congratulations on losing the cpap, you must be very happy about your new found health.. Good for you..


Due to my "throat architecture" I will be married to mine for the rest of my life, but we are becoming better friends,


and since its saving my life, I guess its going to be my best buddy.

Im glad yours was there for you when you needed it, and now you can pass it on to someone else who needs it.

Donna - I think you may not understand about that surgery - it has been medically tested and proven by completely reputable (to say the least) major med. research centres, etc. that OSA is eliminated, period, by the surgery. It's not one of the fly-by-night or wishful thinking things we do chide others on being in denial about - it is a reality. Do a little research, if only for your own satisfaction. Anyone here who knows me will tell you I'm the last person to accept spurious notions about medical stuff, and/or maybe a majority of "alternative" medicine claims, but this happens to be true, whether or not it is well understood yet.

Then I would think that the researchers deliberately eliminated from the patient cohort those obese patients w/receding chins, large tongues, long uvulas, etc., etc. Losing the fat can NOT change such anatomical problems. This would be standard protocol for a research study, eliminate co-morbities that could distort the results.

Of course it all depends on what you are reading. Here is a report from 2008 that says it helps, but may not completely get rid of OSA --

(Reuters Health) - In people who are obese, weight-loss surgery will likely lead to an improvement in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) but it won't eliminate the nighttime breathing disorder. Many patients will have residual OSA one year after weight-loss surgery (also known as bariatric surgery), results of a study indicate.

So -- I would suggest another sleep study to make sure that the OSA is indeed resolved.

It's not about changing the fat alone, there are other factors involved including phrenic nerves, gastric back-up (whether due to the LES flap not working properly or something else), etc. etc. It's a complicated area of your body and you can't simplify what you don't know about it until you do more research. There's a lot going on there, and the 'pieces' (stomach/esophagus, gallbladder, bile ducts, etc.) are interdependent.

So you are saying that no need to due another sleep study to rule out the possiblity of other factors entering into the picture? Cause that is the way I read your threads -- no need for a further sleep study as this "cures" the OSA.

Another sleep study is just another tool to make sure that other factors aren't entering into the picture.


Not saying there aren't cases where this surgery hasn't helped or cured the OSA -- just that I wouldn't be comfortable ASSUMING that I was cured without the additional sleep study.

Slinky wrote:Then I would think that the researchers deliberately eliminated from the patient cohort those obese patients w/receding chins, large tongues, long uvulas, etc., etc. Losing the fat can NOT change such anatomical problems. This would be standard protocol for a research study, eliminate co-morbities that could distort the results.

So I would think that since bariatric surgery does not "fix" these anatomical problems but since one factor of OSA(obesity) may have been removed, a new sleep study would be indicated to see what difference the surgery has made. It seems like a simple enough step to take.

A Resmed Escape is a brick that should only be used as a temporary solution while waiting for a data capable machine. People should be paid to use it, not vice versa.

The medical studies I've read on this issue (not some news journalist's take on the articles, but the actual scientific articles themselves) have generally shown that losing a significant amount of weight leads to a reduction in AHI that in some cases is so dramatic the OSA is effectively cured. It's well established that AHI increases as BMI increases, so why shouldn't AHI decrease as BMI decreases? The reason researchers use gastric bypass/banding/etc. to study this is because those surgeries are the only consistent methods to significantly reduce body fat; when they do this on a population of OSA patients, the AHI drops as weight drops and some people see such a reduction in AHI that they are no longer diagnosable as having OSA. What's really surprising is that many of these people are still overweight (though not nearly as much as before surgery) which suggests to me that if we all got down to our ideal bodyweights, many of use would not have OSA, or have such a mild case that we don't require therapy.

Maybe later I will post some medical studies on this, though I am sure some of them been posted on this site at one time or another.

One of the few complaints I have with this board is that everyone is so adamant that they are completely powerless to beat OSA when in fact losing enough body fat may very well cure their disease. I personally accept that I have OSA, but until I get down to my ideal body weight, I am not willing to say that this is a lifelong disease. Indeed, this may be merely a consequence of my obesity.

All that said, plenty of OSA sufferers are thin and have no extra weight to lose - the above points do not apply to them.