What is your AHI now? How can I bringt down?

I was diagnosed with AHI of 59. My apneas totalled to almost 500 (mostly OSA) for the duration of about 8 hours that I slept during the sleep study. Now that I am using the S9Autoset for the past one week, I have tried different settings after being encouraged by the forum members to experiments with the machine. In the first night of usage my AHI was 7. But after I removed EPR it immediately came down to 3. I have slowly increased my min pressure setting to almost 15 and max to 20. But the best result I could get is AHI 1.5. I am afraid to increase the min pressure any more.

My question is will I ever be able to bring my AHI to a very low as some members are reporting, especially after having diagnosed with such a high number?

Also can the members tell me what was your diagonised AHI and what is now. Very eager to know the answer.

dameem wrote:But the best result I could get is AHI 1.5. I am afraid to increase the min pressure any more.

A machine recorded AHI = 1.5 is VERY LOW. And there's no good reason to chase an AHI = 0.0.

In general, therapy is considered effective if your machine recorded AHI is consistently below 5 night after night after night. But after the AHI < 5, there's more to getting a really good night's sleep than just a super low AHI.

Now there are people who do feel better when their AHI is lower than 2.0 or 2.5 than they feel when their AHI is between 4 and 5.. For me, I can tell a big difference between how I feel when my AHI < 2.5 and how I feel when my AHI > 3.5. Nights where my AHI is between 2.5 and 3.5 can go either way in the "how do I feel and function the next day" criteria for measuring therapy effectiveness. But it's pretty hard for me to tell much difference in how I feel when I have an AHI = 2.0 versus those rare nights where I both sleep well AND have an AHI = 0.5 (or less). (For me, the pressure needed to consistently get my AHI below 1.5 night after night after night leads to problems with aerophagia, bad dreams, chapped lips, and a host of other comfort issues that keeps me from getting deep, restorative sleep)

What I'm trying to say is this: Once your AHI is consistently below 5 night after night, it's better to judge whether you need to make more adjustments to therapy based on how you're feeling rather than getting caught up in chasing a 0.0 AHI because an AHI = 0.0 because high quality sleep requires more than non-elevated AHI. And since you do not want to increase your pressure further and your AHI is well under 5.0, there's no good reason to keep increasing the pressure.

Also can the members tell me what was your diagonised AHI and what is now. Very eager to know the answer.

My RDI = 23.4 on my diagnostic sleep test: My RDI included OAs and "hypopneas with arousal"---hypopneas scored under the AASM Alternative Standard for hypopneas---i.e. Rule 4B (the non-Medicare standard). Most of my events were hypopneas with arousal and I've been told that under Medicare guidelines, I would not have qualified for a CPAP because my "medicare" AHI was less than 5.

Ditto to what Robysue said. Don't go chasing that perfect 0.0 AHI. It is not needed and an unrealistic goal which will drive you crazy trying to get.

I have been on cpap machine for nearly 3 years. My long term AHI is 1.4 I think it was the last time I checked. Some nights I am below one AHI and some nights I am above 4 AHI. My diagnostic AHI was 53.

AHI of 1.5 is quite excellent. You will have some nights that are better and some nights that aren't so good. We don't sleep the same each night and it is common to have some minor fluctuations in AHI.

Also...with time that AHI might trend downward a little more without changing anything. I know mine did when I recently changed machines.

I wish I could get mine to 1.5! That's pretty awesome. I'm in the 2.5-5 range. I was told I had an AHI of 18 in the sleep lab. I feel the difference with CPAP but I still like to lie down and rest in the afternoon for 15-20 minutes. I am pretty sure I will never feel fully energetic even with CPAP but I am happy with the results so far either way. I think there is a danger in obsessing over your data. If my AHI is under 5 most of the time I know the CPAP is doing it's job and I'm ready to live my life and not check the data every day. I own my OSA it doesn't own me.

What was your titration? Each setting change should be given 4-5 days to watch the trend. An AHI=1.5 is excellent! Anything under <5 is considered OK. How are you feeling?

My AHI has been less than 1.0 since I started on CPAP - but it's rarely 0.0.

I echo what others have said - your numbers are low/good. Relax and now enjoy some good quality sleep

Cheers,
xena