airCurve 10 operation

[joshdog]

Should my AirCurve 10 V auto pump a lot of air if I stop breathing? I thought that was the CPAP purpose. I can hold my breath for 40 seconds and the machine does not increase how much air is being blown into mask. Is there a problem with the machine or doctors settings?

Thanks
Barndog

[Dog Slobber]

No.

The AirCurve does not force you to breath. All it does is maintain an increased pressure.

[Miss Emerita]

Pugsy just gave a terrific reply to PorcoRosso, which might help to answer your question, joshdog. I've pasted it below.

It's a common thought that the machine senses an apnea event of some sort and immediately thinks "OMG I need to increase the pressure" and it does it and blows the airway open.
Nothing is further from the truth in terms of what actually happens.
While any apnea event is happening...obstructive or hyponea....the machine sits by and twiddles its little thumbs until the airway opens up naturally. Then the auto adjusting algorithm kicks in and does some evaluation of the current and past status of the airway....and then decides what to do. All this takes time and if you have a cluster of events happen then there's an inherent amount of time spent twiddling the thumbs that slows down the response as well.

Central/clear airway apneas....the machine simply won't respond to at all because the airway is already open and more pressure won't help. Unless someone has a machine designed with a special algorithm to deal with central apneas....centrals get ignored by regular cpap/apap/bilevel machines.

It's a common thought that the machine can respond and go to much higher pressures that might be needed (once the machine goes through its evaluation process and decides more pressure is needed) in the blink of an eye. That it can go from 5 to 10 cm or higher in the blink of an eye. It simply doesn't respond that fast...it can't. It increases a little bit at a time and evaluates as it increases. All this "thinking" can take several minutes to get done and all the while the machine is gradually increasing the pressure the airway can continue to collapse and have apnea events happen.

The whole key to using auto adjusting pressures and having it work optimally is to use it with a minimum pressure that does the bulk of the work preventing the collapse from happening in the first place and then do some increases as needed for special needs...like supine sleeping or REM related worsening of OSA.

They work best when preventing the collapse in the first place and not trying to fix something that gets broken after the break has already happened.
So we need to use a minimum pressure that means the machine can get to what might be needed for those special circumstance in a timely fashion...not take 20 minutes but instead take maybe 5 minutes. We have to give the machine a better head start when using auto adjusting pressure mode.

I have REM dependent OSA meaning my OSA is much worse in REM than in the other stages of sleep. Supine sleeping has never been a big factor for me but REM sure is. It's documented that my OSA is 5 times worse in REM than in non REM and I learned that during REM I might need 6 to 8 cm more pressure than I need in those other sleep stages.
Now I could use a fix pressure that would cover the REM pressure needs but that would mean using around 15 cm all night long just to cover the 20% of the time I am in REM. I could do it but it's not much fun. Instead I prefer to use a lower pressure for 80% of the night and have that lower pressure still be close enough to get to where I need the pressure to be in a timely fashion to deal with REM related pressure needs.

Sometimes all we need to do to give the machine a better head start is a relatively small increase in that minimum pressure.
So I use a little more minimum all night so that I don't have to use a lot more all night. Make sense???

...

Prevention is the key....not trying to fix it after it happened. All machines work this way...use a minimum pressure to hold the airway open for most of the time and then increase for the special circumstances that might cause a higher pressure.

[Pugsy]

I can hold my breath for 40 seconds and the machine does not increase how much air is being blown into mask. Is there a problem with the machine or doctors settings?

Just to clarify something....when we hold our breath to try to get the machine (any machine) to do anything we are essentially creating a central apnea. The airway is open but no air is flowing. Of course when we hold our breath we are the cause of the air not moving.

NONE OF THE REGULAR CPAP/APAP/BILEVEL machines will do a darn thing in response to a central apnea...doesn't matter if you are the cause of it or it happens during a sleep period.

The higher end bilevel machines like the ASV or the others ...they can respond when we don't breathe on our own but the regular machines simply can't do it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your machine or the settings when it doesn't do anything for a fake/or even real central apnea....they were never designed to do anything.

[palerider]

Should my AirCurve 10 V auto pump a lot of air if I stop breathing?

No

I thought that was the CPAP purpose.

Again, no.

I can hold my breath for 40 seconds and the machine does not increase how much air is being blown into mask. Is there a problem with the machine or doctors settings?

There's a problem with you playing games with the machine, and it going "nope".

Just use it, pull the data, and post it.

[joshdog]

Thanks to all that replied!!
What started all these questions is, I have been on CPAP for almost two years but in the last two months I have been woken up twice gasping for air with very rapid short breathing.

Thanks

Joshdog

[Dog Slobber]

The start to your, and most topics, should be posting graphs.

[zonker]

Thanks to all that replied!!
What started all these questions is, I have been on CPAP for almost two years but in the last two months I have been woken up twice gasping for air with very rapid short breathing.

Thanks

Joshdog

please see my sig for the "newbie thread" and the download link for oscar.

the experts will be better able to help you once they see some charts from your data.

good luck!

ETA: i realize you aren't a newbie. it's just that the post i link as more info about oscar, which is referred to as sleepyhead in the post.