Res Med Air fit f20 & excessive events

[brillo72]

I have a Res Med Airsense auto and airfit f20 full mask. I am almost two weeks into my therapy. The first week was really rough. I felt worse on therapy than I ever did before, pounding head, brain fog, sinus issues, and a general ill feeling. The second week has been better. I am feeling much better. My issue is mask leakage and number of hourly events. I don't have leakage around my mask to face but rather around the swivel connection where there is a ton of air coming out. Everyone I have talked to says this is normal. But I don't see the point of having a good mask to face seal only to lose allot of air elsewhere. My machine reports a good mask seal but a 19L/min leak and 18.3 events per hour with an AHI of 18.5. I even tried turning off ramp and sleeping with full air of 8. My sleep study reported 9 obstructive apneas, 1 central apnea, and 68 hypopneas for a total DBE of 77 and an AHI of 26.6.

Does anyone had this experience with this mask or does anyone have any ideas on my situation?

Thanks in advance,
David

[The Choker]

I don't have leakage around my mask to face but rather around the swivel connection where there is a ton of air coming out.

Are you talking about the design ports on the mask? The mask does have to constantly vent air to prevent rebreathing of high CO2.

19L/min leak

That's not a bad average leak level. But, it would be much better to check the leak line in Sleepyhead. You might find zero leak for much of the night and an unacceptably high leak for some periods.

AHI of 18.5

That's not good at all. What are your pressure settings?

Have you learned to use Sleepyhead software?

[LSAT]

I have a Res Med Airsense auto and airfit f20 full mask. I am almost two weeks into my therapy. The first week was really rough. I felt worse on therapy than I ever did before, pounding head, brain fog, sinus issues, and a general ill feeling. The second week has been better. I am feeling much better. My issue is mask leakage and number of hourly events. I don't have leakage around my mask to face but rather around the swivel connection where there is a ton of air coming out. Everyone I have talked to says this is normal. But I don't see the point of having a good mask to face seal only to lose allot of air elsewhere. My machine reports a good mask seal but a 19L/min leak and 18.3 events per hour with an AHI of 18.5. I even tried turning off ramp and sleeping with full air of 8. My sleep study reported 9 obstructive apneas, 1 central apnea, and 68 hypopneas for a total DBE of 77 and an AHI of 26.6.

Does anyone had this experience with this mask or does anyone have any ideas on my situation?

Thanks in advance,
David

The holes around the swivel are for CO2 exhaust. They must remain uncovered. The amount of air coming out is calculated based on the mask and air pressure. All masks have some sort of CO2 exhaust. With your mask, you would suffocate without that exhaust.

[Pugsy]

Let's see what that AHI is made up of. It's too high for sure but fixing it will depend on what kind of events are happening.
Get SleepyHead software...it will show much more detail than the numbers off the LCD screen on the machine or what the MyAir website shows.
https://sleep.tnet.com/equipment

Some examples of what you can see
viewtopic/t103468/Need-help-with-screen-shots.html

That leak number...19.5 L/min most likely from MyAir or off the LCD screen and that's not an overall average like people think.
Instead it is what we call a 95% number and all that means is for 95% of the night the leak was at OR BELOW that number.
People often don't know about or forget about the "OR BELOW" part of the definition.
ResMed says they can handle or compensate for leaks up to 24 L/min (and in reality they can handle a little more) so ever if you were at 19.5 all the night the machine could still effectively respond and record. You need to look at the leak graph to see how much time you spent at whatever the leak was.
5% of the time you were above the 19.5 L/min leak number and we don't know how high it went without seeing the software reports but in general we don't get all upset with 5% of the night in big leak unless the leaks wake us up often. When leaks wake us up they need to be fixed even if they are tiny leaks because anything that disturbs our sleep is unwanted.