Cleaning CPAP machine

[Suzannaor]

In an article I found in one of my diabetes magazine there were some instructions for caring for your CPAP machine. It was very thorough, except for mentioning how often you should thoroughly clean the machine, reservoir and tubing. I always clean the nasal mask every day, and the reservoir every other day. But I've only been disconnecting the tubing and washing it in soapy water about every couple months. Should I clean the tubing more often? Any suggestions? Thanks.

[LSAT]

This is all personal preference....Personally, I never clean my hose...I replace it about once a year. I very rarely clean my mask...I wipe it every night with baby wipes and replace the cushion about once a year. I never clean my humidifier tank because I always use distilled water...the tank is crystal clear.

[Pugsy]

Some past discussions about cleaning
viewtopic.php?p=567264#p567264
and if you use the forum search feature there's a lot more that are recent but the end result is always the same...some clean everything often and some don't ever clean anything.

Since you asked about the hose...I don't bother with cleaning it or washing it or whatever. Only thing that goes through it is filtered air. I do periodically give it a once over to make sure I don't see anything growing inside either end
After 3 years of use I found a teeny tiny dark speck on the inside of the rubber coupling that I couldn't remove. So I opened up a new hose package.

Do whatever you feel comfortable doing in terms of cleaning. There's a wide range of what is "acceptable" routine depending on your personal preferences. Germaphobes will cringe at what my routine is and I will roll my eyes at their routine...

[Suzannaor]

Thanks for your quick responses. And thank you, Pugsy, for that link. Wow! Lots of discussion on cleaning our machines. I haven't been on the site for a while and forgot there is a Search option!

[palerider]

Thanks for your quick responses. And thank you, Pugsy, for that link. Wow! Lots of discussion on cleaning our machines. I haven't been on the site for a while and forgot there is a Search option!

if you can't find what you're looking for with the built in search, use google, just put "site:cpaptalk.com" in your query, and it'll limit the results to this site.

[archangle]

It's not obvious to the newbie or easy to find, but if we put all the CPAP cleaning threads into one, it would be 300 pages long and have 400 different opinions.

It would be nice to have some more concise, better organized answers, but it's not obvious how to do that right or easy to do.