OSA or Central Apneas?

I am starting to wonder if I have central apneas because my AHI is usually below 5 which I understand is acceptable, but I still have long gaps in my encore report of not breathing if I am interpreting it correctly. Also, I have a neurological disorder that is an instability of the autonomic nervous system. It affects everything from respiration, to digestion. Anything that the autonomic nervous system normally regulates is affected. There aren't many doctors who are aware of this disorder. Dr. Oz is one of them who is.
But there is no treatment.
How would I know if I am having centrals as opposed to OSA or a combination of both?
Thx
Victoria

You would have to put up a Daily report to see what was going on.

With the machine you have, it will count or score central and obstructive apnea together. So your AHI=5 would include both central and obstructive components as it cannot tell the difference.

If you increased Minimum pressure by .5 or 1 cm and that AHI dropped you would know the AHI is obstructive. If AHI went higher they could be central. But in either case you don't have enough to worry about.

vdol wrote:I still have long gaps in my encore report of not breathing if I am interpreting it correctly.

Not sure what you are seeing on your report that would show "not breathing." If you're talking about seeing long horizontal black bars across the top of the leak line on a Daily Details graph, those black bars mean there was a period of Large Leak going on for the duration of the black bar.

Can you post a screenshot of the graph from one of your "Daily Details" pages that has the gaps you are talking about? This kind of graph....

How do I do that? I guess I can print out the stats from Encore Pro and scan them in and save as a jpeg. then how do I get them up on this forum?
Thx
Victoria

vdol52 wrote:How do I do that? I guess I can print out the stats from Encore Pro and scan them in and save as a jpeg. then how do I get them up on this forum?
Thx
Victoria

You would have to store the jpg or pdf image on some other website, like Google Picasa, flickr, or other photo website. Once you post the picture there, it should have a URL to get to that picture.

Then to get it to display here, you copy that URL (i.e. http://www.pictureplace/vdol52/picture1.jpg) and then when you post it here, you click on the "Img" button and insert that URL between the "Img" brackets and it displays the report here. So all the pics you see here in posts are actually stored on another site somewhere, when displayed here it follows the URL to that picture.

I don't know of the best photo place to store your pictures, if you find one let me know as I need one too, hopefully it is one that doesn't include your email address in the URL as you just open your email address up to spam.

Okay good instructions.
This is just one night and some nights the purple line hits the yellow ceiling line.
What do you think of this?

Crap! Look like I did something wrong. I uploaded the image to Picasa and copied the URL and pasted it between the image brackets. Any suggestions?

vdol52 wrote:Crap! Look like I did something wrong. I uploaded the image to Picasa and copied the URL and pasted it between the image brackets. Any suggestions?

Your link worked, it took me to your report.

I don't see any signs of centrals, you had some periods of high leak especially at the end of the session. If you want to improve
your AHI you could increase the Minimum pressure to 10 cm. If that makes it harder to fall asleep, maybe setup a Ramp lower pressure so it Ramps up to the 10 cm. If it is the tank, you probably don't have that feature in the Auto, it came along with the M series.

But I wouldn't worry about centrals, yours appears all obstructive starting with Snore, Hypopnea and Apnea.