What does this mean?

[Brobbi]

I'm still new to reading my data and fully understanding all that I see on the reports. But last night I had large periods of "periodic breathing" and I haven't seen that before. What is periodic breathing? I woke up this morning completely wiped out and it took me a long time to come out of feeling foggy.

Thanks for your insight!

[Wulfman]

That's something new with the PR 1 series.
Here's a link to a search on "Periodic AND breathing" that I just did. If you want to read all those posts, help yourself.

viewtopic/t50992/search.php?keywords=%2 ... +breathing

What are your pressure settings? Are they wide open or a narrow range?


Den

[dave21]

In answer to your question Brobbi, periodic breathing as I understand it is abnormal respiration in which periods of shallow and deep breathing alternate, and you usually find that apneas will occur either side of the wave forms. So when looking at a waveform graph on the machine, and you should be able to do this on the PR1 hopefully, you'll see very similar wave forms which will look normal but then see apneas after each one.

On the PR1 I think it highlights the periodic breathing in green on the graph.

Thanks
Dave

[Brobbi]

In answer to your question Brobbi, periodic breathing as I understand it is abnormal respiration in which periods of shallow and deep breathing alternate, and you usually find that apneas will occur either side of the wave forms. So when looking at a waveform graph on the machine, and you should be able to do this on the PR1 hopefully, you'll see very similar wave forms which will look normal but then see apneas after each one.

On the PR1 I think it highlights the periodic breathing in green on the graph.

Thanks
Dave

Thank you, Dave, for answering my question. I had searched previous posts but it didn't make sense to me as to what it truly meant. So I appreciate you explaining it to me. I will look at the report more closely when I get a chance later today. I feel like I slept a lot better last night and I feel much better this morning. Looking at my reports since Feb. when I started, Sunday is the only night I've had period breathing show up on the reports so it seems like it was just an "off" night for me.

[dave21]

You're welcome, and hopefully it's just a one off night I actually like the way that the PR1 shows the periodic breathing, I wish the ResMed devices did something similar in highlighting the graphs.

Thanks
Dave

[JohnBFisher]

Greetings, Rested Gal keeps her

Links to Central Apnea
viewtopic.php?p=22702

In particular, the following article dives in depth into the cause of central apnea (and periodic breathing):

http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/conte ... l.pdf+html

In essence, if you compare this to a convoy of vehichles, we have a good analogy. Sometimes our bodies don't sense the CO2 buildup like they should. When that happens we tend to slow our breathing until it stops. Then in an effort to compensate our bodies kick back into high gear and we hyperventilate for a bit (breathe quite a bit faster). Compared to the convoy, most people are like the lead vehicles that maintain a nice steady pace. But the vehicles toward the rear of the convoy tend to "yo yo" between too fast and too slow. That's what periodic breathing is. We breathe too slowly, build up too much CO2, then breathe too rapidly, expelling too much CO2 (under and over shooting). The result is that not only is there this "yo yo" effect, but we also often stop breathing for a while between the cycles.

Thus, our respiration (the airflow) versus our effort to breathe (the thoracic effort) can be presented as:



If it only happens every now and then, keep an eye on it. If it happens all the time, you should discuss this with your doctors (GP as well as sleep specialist). Why GP? Well, it might indicate an issue with your heart. Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) is the most common cause of periodic breathing. That's something you will want to eliminate as a cause.

Hope that helps explain what "periodic breathing" is.