Tec5 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 7:46 am
lazarus wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 1:30 am
laughing out loud ?
Simple question (asked again)
Is the attached overview graphic what you mean by “trending data”?
Yes, this is one way trending data can be presented.
The reason I ask this question is because the overview graphic is almost never seen on the forum, normally seen is single night data.
Some of the folks on this forum (including myself) are numbers geeks. The detailed daily data is mostly important for
fixing specific problems. Unless the detailed daily data is representative of the overall trend it is not a good idea to generalize about the overall efficacy of xPAP therapy from one night's detailed data. But when a person is clearly having trouble with xPAP and/or is still not feeling well in spite of using xPAP all night long, every night, looking at the detailed data provides a great deal of insight into what
might be wrong.
One of the most common problems that can lead to ineffective xPAP treatment is the presence of significant leaks. The leaks can effect therapy in more than one way, but a lot of newbies who are struggling with leak problems may not be aware that leaks are, in fact, the problem.
Sleep fragmentation is not always caused by respiratory events, and if the machine reported AHI is already very low night after night after night, but the sleep remains fragmented, then it's time to start looking elsewhere for the cause of the sleep fragmentation instead of jumping to the conclusion that the OSA is not being reasonably well treated. xPAP data may very well not shed much light on other sleep issues when someone is not responding to xPAP therapy by "feeling better" after genuinely acclimating to xPAP therapy. (And sometimes it can take months rather than just a few weeks to genuinely acclimate to xPAP.)
You have made the point that home acquired oximetry data is “entertaining” but not necessarily useful ; fine, that’s your opinion. But that should not infer that xPAPers who want that supplemental data are just pleasuring their egos or something.
Lazarus's point is that if you believe that the machine reported AHI is so inaccurate as to be useless, then you should be equally cautious about thinking that consumer-oriented tools (like Smart Watches and O2 rings) are totally accurate in terms of measuring night-time transient O2 desats that may only last a few seconds.
For people with known cardiac problems or for people who are genuinely worried about O2 desats occurring despite using xPAP, sure it might be useful to get a Smart Watch or O2 ring (if you can afford it) and spend the time looking at that data---particularly if you go through the trouble of syncing it up with the daily data from Oscar.
But for
most of us, adding that data is not likely to shed any significant light on why a particular night was less than restful: Even people without OSA and without cardiac problems can have really
bad sleep on occasion. And people can have significant problems with fragmented, non-restorative sleep for a whole bunch of reasons that have no connection to either OSA or cardiac issues.
Where I come down on this debate is pretty simple:
If you are feeling pretty decent when you wake up each morning and your machine AHI is typically reasonably low, then there is a pretty high probability that your OSA is being well managed by your xPAP therapy. And there's no need to "add" additional data that requires additional equipment and time to analyze just to determine what you already know.
Conversely, If you are not feeling pretty decent when you wake up on most mornings AND you are using your xPAP all night long, every single night, you (and ideally your doctors) need to do some real investigation into what is still wrong with your sleep. Part of that is the obvious: Look at the trending data for AHI---if this is too high, then that's a pretty good indication that the xPAP therapy might not yet be optimized. Look at sleep fragmentation and leaks---if someone is waking up 6-10 times every night to turn the machine off and back on or there's a lot of leaking going on, that can explain why someone is not yet feeling better: You have to actually
get some quality sleep for xPAP to make a difference. And, in particularly, if O2 desats were a significant problem on the diagnostic sleep study, it may very well be worth tracking O2 levels for a while and see if they correspond with flow limitations and micro-events that are not flagged as hypopneas or apneas because they don't last for 10 seconds.
Back to my question, is the overview graphic what you mean by “trending data”, or is there some other representation that is useful to demonstrate “trends”?
Trending data includes more than just the AHI. One other important trending data is the actual
usage data: Looking at the number of hours used, the actual hours the machine is used, and the number of times the machine is turned off and back on over the course of several months is the easiest way to establish whether a person is both using their machine all night, every night AND whether that person is likely dealing with sleep issues tied to bad sleep hygiene and/or significant sleep fragmentation issues that might not be associated with under treated OSA.
And, quite frankly, if you are going through the trouble of collecting O2 data, the trending data for the O2 data is probably far more important than the O2 data for any particular night. If you have one rare bad night with a bunch of desats scored by the oximeter of your choice, that most likely doesn't indicate anything is wrong. If you frequently have nights with a significant number of desats, that probably does indicate you (and your doctors) need to be investigating things further.
Joined as robysue on 9/18/10. Forgot my password & the email I used was on a machine that has long since died & gone to computer heaven.
Correct number of posts is 7250 as robysue + what I have as robysue1
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