My DME made me use A blood oxygen Meter

[snyderm]

They wouldn't tell me why, but they are making me use a Blood oxygen meter for a night so they can look at it. I have an APAP I have been using for two weeks now, so I find it strange that they are doing this, or that they didn't do this in the beginning. Is this a normal sort of thing that they would do?

I can think of two possibilities.

#1 My apap could operating occasionally at max pressure. So they might want to see if my Blood oxygen level is still going down. The highest I have ever seen my machine is 14-17, so I don't think this is it.

#2 My apap is operating usually at minimum pressure. This would make them question whether I need a CPAP at all, so they want to look at my blood oxygen level.

Can anyone give me some feedback as to what might be going on here? Why would they do this?

[Hawthorne]

It may be that they just want to check to see that the machine is set to keep events down and you blood oxygen levels up where they should be - a followup after some time on the machine.

Were there a lot of destats in your sleep study? Was the sleep study a good one? Did you sleep well and for a good number of hours? If it was not the best sleep study and you didn't get enough sleep for a good machine setting then they may do this to just see if things are good.

Also, you are using a fairly new machine that has fairly new software (fairly new on the market). They may be checking out that the reports are as accurate as possible. It's a "2 week checkup" so to speak. Two weeks in, IMO, is a good time for a "checkup".

This is a good thing!

[Arizona-Willie]

The DME did GOOD.

Many of us have bought recording oximeters out of pocket to be able to check our oxygen saturation for ourselves.

I use mine every night and track it just like I track the machine data.

The whole purpose of trying to deal with apneas and hypopneas is to keep your O2 saturation up.
Unfortunatley, they don't build oximeters into the XPAP machines. Why not is a good question.
Knowing how many apneas and hypopneas is a great start, but as many of us have discovered it is possible to have very few apneas on a given night and have the oximeter show that we were below 88 percent more than we would like to be.

If we have quite a few desats it indicates we might need a higher pressure setting on our machines.

[roster]

They wouldn't tell me why, ........

Another example of the fine humans that work for DMEs.

[GumbyCT]

They wouldn't tell me why, ........

cuz the doctor ordered it? 'They' won't do anything w/o an order from a doctor but 'they' didn't want to admit it.

[jules]

having your O2 levels checked periodically is GREAT - don't knock it - more DME's need to do this more often