New to this and confused?!

[Alwaysverytired]

Hello, after years of being tired and thinking it was normal I stumbled across cpap and booked in to do a sleep test.

I got my results emailed today, but the appointment to explain it is not until next Thursday!

I am wondering if any people here could help explain what it all means? Does this go some way to explain why I am so tired?!

I have attached the results (with all identification removed)

Thank goodness I found this forum as I am really nervous

[katestyles]

Hi there and welcome to the forum!

I looked at your results - it is not a format I have seen before, but here are the things I can see.

The big color diagram indicates that you have a "suspected pathalogical breathing disorder" and is all red and scary.

Looking lower down, on the right hand side, where it says results, you can see a list of different apneas and some percentages.

You have ZERO obstructive apneas, zero central apneas, and zero mixed apneas. You do NOT have Obstructive sleep apnea, BUT........

You did have 23 unclassified apneas. out of 4880 breaths. So 23 times in the night, something stopped you breathing. But 4857 times, your breathing was just fine. Well, I say fine...

You had "flow limitations" - your breathing was restricted a little. And you were snoring - which is not good. This restricts the oxygen reaching your lungs - and your blood. That is what the next few rows show.

Your blood oxygen percentage should be around 96-98%, but was below 90% for 5 minutes, and for some of that time, 1 minute, was even below 85%. This is not good, and might be why you are feeling tired.

So big picture - you are not always breathing fully, and your blood oxygen levels are dropping.

There is really no need to be nervous though, because everything is relatively mild, and you are not going to drop dead in the middle of the night.

I hope when you have your appointment next week they can come up with a treatment that will help you


Pleas come back and let us know.

[Dreaming1]

You would be classified in the clinically insignificant range at best, meaning your insurance isn’t going to want to pay for cpap therapy based on those results. Being under 10 times an hour does that. Problem is you are noticing how tired you are, which means your sleep is fragmented with arousals from something (snoring probably and reras) and hst studies don’t account for those. Your doc is probably going to recommend coming in for an inlab study next based on O2 sats.

[LSAT]

I don't know where the "12" suspected breathing disorder came from, but you have mild sleep apnea. I will be up to your doctor (and insurance) to determine how you proceed.
AHI = 8.7
<5...not treated
5-14...Mild
15-29...moderate
30+...severe

[jimbud]

I am no expert and I will not attempt to give you any guidance,except if you are put on a machine MAKE them give you a fully functional one. Like the Resmed Airsense 10 Autoset or similar machine.
I wish I had known enough to do this when I first started therapy.
DME's tend to give you the cheapest machine they have. More profit for them less options for you.

Good luck,
JPB

[kteague]

Sometimes what is not said is important. What we can't see from these results is what your sleep looked like. If you had good quality sleep with a decent representation of the sleep stages, you can be fairly comfortable that these results tell you what you need to know. If you were short on deep sleep or REM sleep, or especially REM sleep while supine, there's a chance your results for this night did not capture your worst case scenario thus not fully reflect the severity of your sleep disordered breathing. It may be these results are enough for your doctor to order a lab study. Or start treatment. The fact that you are symptomatic makes me feel you should not accept this as the end of the discussion regarding your sleep breathing (or lack thereof). Good luck with things. Let us know what the doc says after your meeting.

[Snoregone Conclusion]

I find Dreaming1’s assessment bizarre at best: insurance companies don’t want to cover xpap at all if they can avoid it, but the AHI is high enough to be more than clinically required to need treatment, without even considering the desats seen, and when combined with the other data, those desats are worth treating. Insurance companies won’t want to pay for it just as a matter of course. As long as you fulfill utilization compliance requirements, it’d be weird if they wouldn’t cover it.

When I did a sleep study, I didn’t even have this high of an AHI, or even as low of desats, but with the various symptoms of fatigue, etc. and RDI (which Medicare rules will treat equivalent to AHI with the other symptoms) my insurance would cover it, as it follows Medicare guidelines, which many insurance companies will do. Long-term disrupted sleep combined with enough lower desats will cause problems worth treating. That being said, my desats were more than half the measured time, as opposed to just a few minutes in a night, but the question is, what effects do you suffer and are they enough? The AHI is high enough, the desats sometimes low enough, and there’s always the issue that a sleep study may not show things as bad as they usually are when you’re in your natural sleep environment. I did a take-home study, and I assert the data they collected was not the worst of nights I’d had: I started treatment, and I’ve only missed due to power outage since I started in October last year: I’ve absolutely benefited from it, as imperfect as things are. It’s inconvenient, but better than not doing it.

I expect your doctor to recommend treatment, and I believe you’d experience benefit from treatment, based on this data, and if you’re compliant, insurance will cover it according to their rules.

[SDBud]

You would be classified in the clinically insignificant range at best, meaning your insurance isn’t going to want to pay for cpap therapy based on those results. Being under 10 times an hour does that.

IF someone tries to tell you that stopping breathing 5 times an hour ISN'T a problem, ask them if you can stop THEIR breathing that often, just for fun.

While an AHI of 5 is considered by many (not here) to be adequate, getting under 2 WILL be noticeable, and preferred.

[Julie]

I'd get my GP to do labwork looking for other problems (thyroid, etc) that could cause sleepiness or tiredness whether or not you have insignificant (but still bothersome) apnea... or has it been done lately?

[Dreaming1]

Checked with someone in the industry. It has changed. I am wrong now. It used to be 10 for Medicare to pay for it, but the rule has changed now.

[zonker]

Checked with someone in the industry. It has changed. I am wrong now. It used to be 10 for Medicare to pay for it, but the rule has changed now.

thank you for that. so many of us feel that we can't admit when we've gotten something wrong. glad to see you aren't in that group!