Smart Card Data Useless??? That's What I Was Told..

[michaelho]

I reckon the data from the encore pro download must be as accurate in many ways as a sleep study. From my (bad) experience of 2 sleep studies), in a sleep study you are in a strange environment, with so many wires attached to you. In mine the wires were too short and did not allow me to turn over (as I normally do many times per night). The bed was uncomfortable and I even took one of my pillows but the underlying one was 'different' so affected my sleep. I think I got about 3 hours sleep of some fashion for each sleep study. So how can anyone argue that data from at home from the smart card is worse?

[ColinP]

I say they do a pretty good job considering the circumstances.

Agreed, and the big advantage is that the data is real data from your own home, in your own bed, where you normally try to sleep, not some artificial environment with people prodding and poking at you all the time.

Colin

[sharon1965]

at that sleep study two weeks ago, i froze my a$$ off, my shoulder got so cold it was numb, the tech woke me 3 times to re-seat the band around my chest and one time to slap a nasty chin strap on me, and the bed was so uncomfortable i woke up in pain a couple of times; a normal night for me is no walk in the park, but it's certainly better than that! not to mention, at the follow up app't, i mentioned the chin strap and told the doc i was looking into a full face mask because i must have been mouth leaking for her to put one on me; he said he didn't think it was enough of an issue to worry about it and keep doing what i'm doing...

so, um, yeah, i'll bet that night was really representative...

[Panhandler]

The docs can argue that the machines don't accurately identify a certain kind of event, but as far as I'm concerned, if my machine is consistent in it's detection of events, that's all I really care about. If I'm trending downward in whatever the machine reports as AHI, I'm happy. I don't obsess over whether it's 4.9 or 5.1, or whether that apnea should have really been a hypopnia.

As long as the machine is consistent with itself, day-to-day, on leaks, hypopnias and apneas, the data is valuable. Certainly better than my subjective notion of how I feel.