Leak rate too good to be true?

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
Deneb
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:52 pm
Location: Boston, USA

Leak rate too good to be true?

Post by Deneb » Fri Aug 08, 2008 1:21 pm

I'm about to hit my third week of treatment, and I'm still trying to figure out what's best for me. I was waking up with bad gas pains, which the tech said must mean mouth-breathing, and she told me to wear a chin strap.

Now, I'm a bit confused by this assumption about mouth breathing. Wouldn't my machine be showing me a high leak rate if I was mouth breathing? I check the last night's stats on the LCD of my Autoset II every morning, and the highest I've ever seem the leak rate is 0.04L/s. Most days, it is 0.00L/s.
It's starting to make me suspicious. (I do have the mask setting set to Swift, so it should be doing the math right)

I tried the chin strap. It's horribly uncomfortable, and I didn't notice much difference sleep-wise. The only difference in my stats was my pressure reading going up by about 1 cm. (I usually read out as 9.6, but the first night with the strap was 10.

I'm trying to avoid provoking my doctor into insisting I wear a FFM. The gas pains, chin strap or not, have gotten better since the first few days. Not much pain now, just lots of "released air".


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Snoredog
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Re: Leak rate too good to be true?

Post by Snoredog » Fri Aug 08, 2008 1:35 pm

[quote="Deneb"]I'm about to hit my third week of treatment, and I'm still trying to figure out what's best for me. I was waking up with bad gas pains, which the tech said must mean mouth-breathing, and she told me to wear a chin strap.

Now, I'm a bit confused by this assumption about mouth breathing. Wouldn't my machine be showing me a high leak rate if I was mouth breathing? I check the last night's stats on the LCD of my Autoset II every morning, and the highest I've ever seem the leak rate is 0.04L/s. Most days, it is 0.00L/s.
It's starting to make me suspicious. (I do have the mask setting set to Swift, so it should be doing the math right)

I tried the chin strap. It's horribly uncomfortable, and I didn't notice much difference sleep-wise. The only difference in my stats was my pressure reading going up by about 1 cm. (I usually read out as 9.6, but the first night with the strap was 10.

I'm trying to avoid provoking my doctor into insisting I wear a FFM. The gas pains, chin strap or not, have gotten better since the first few days. Not much pain now, just lots of "released air".

someday science will catch up to what I'm saying...

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crossfit
Posts: 314
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:49 pm
Location: Boulder Creek, California, USA

Post by crossfit » Fri Aug 08, 2008 1:53 pm

What is probably going on is actually aerophagia since your leak rate rules out mouth breathing. Honestly, from what I have learned here, I would have checked aerophagia before mouth breathing anyway. Look it up in the collective wisdom area as well as a search. There is also a thread going on right now. I am finding I get it a bit too but mostly it just makes me burp. So far no pains. But pains seem to be common.


Deneb
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:52 pm
Location: Boston, USA

Post by Deneb » Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:05 pm

It was the RT's opinion that the air is swallowed in a response to the mouth opening during treatment, and air being blown into the mouth. I have read that it is either that, or air being forced down past the relevant flap.

I had already decided that it couldn't be about mouth breathing, but tried the strap just to see what it did. I am still curious why it brought my pressure up.

But my leak rate is so often 0.00 that I have begun to wonder if the machine is compensating for the mask incorrectly, or something else. As the title says, it seems too good to be true.