New CPAP user

[OaklandR]

Hi everyone, I am a new user of a CPAP (10 days as of last night) and I had a question about my machine.

I have a Sleepeasy with a built in humidifier. On the patient data screens I have a few numbers that I am confused with.

One is 'Blower Hours' which it at 69.4. This makes sense since I have used it for 10 night. I typically sleep 7 hours.

The next is 'Therapy Usage hours'. This number shows 33.6. In the manual it says this number is the amount of time the device provided therapy (with the blower on and the patient connected). I have never ran the blower more than a minute without the mask on my face. Why would this number be so low? What does it count as therapy?

The last one is a 'Session Counter' which is described as a therapy session that lasted longer than 4 hours. Right now it's at 3. Except for the first 2 nights I have slept thought the night maybe waking up an hour before the alarm a few times. This would still put me past 4 hours.

Today I made a spreadsheet so I can log it daily to see how it changes. I might call the medial supply office on Monday to see also.

Any ideas about this? I feel that I have adjusted to the CPAP just fine. My wife says that I am now silent at night compared to the loud snoring from before so she is happy also. The mask fits snug and has no leaks while on. I can feel the pressure and if I try to open my mouth air comes out so I know that I am pressurized. The CPAP machine is quiet and so is the mask.

Thanks

[jules]

Hi

If you are going to contact the medical supply people, ask them for a machine with DATA - you might need to get your doctor to write a script for such a machine.

I suspect you are having large leaks a good part of the night and if that is the case your "therapy" is not really therapy and so the machine won't count all those hours with large leaks as treatment. You probably need to have 4 hours of real treatment a night for the machine to count it towards sessions.


Check these thread for "real" machines

Here ya go, B!

My list of machines that record "full data" (AHI and leak info) and those that don't -- updated through Oct. 2009:
viewtopic.php?p=307168#p307168

DME might not understand what "Full data" is.
viewtopic.php?p=344265#p344265

[OaklandR]

Until Monday what would I look for for leaks? There is no air coming out anywhere except the vents on the mask. The nasal pillow seals perfect and no air comes out from my nose. Seems like I would hear leaking with it on since the air shoots out when I take the mask off.

[dave21]

One is 'Blower Hours' which it at 69.4. This makes sense since I have used it for 10 night. I typically sleep 7 hours.

I don't know the SleepEasy machine, but my take on it would be the blower hours is the amount of hours the machine has been on for, So for 69.4 divide by 10 days = 6.94 hours on average.

The next is 'Therapy Usage hours'. This number shows 33.6. In the manual it says this number is the amount of time the device provided therapy (with the blower on and the patient connected). I have never ran the blower more than a minute without the mask on my face. Why would this number be so low? What does it count as therapy?

Initially I would presume that therapy hours is also the amount of mask time. As it's half of the total blower time, I would suggest this might be the total amount of time that the machine was doing more than idling. e.g. it's monitoring your Apneas or Hypopneas and thinks is giving you additional therapy to reduce these. That's the only thing I can think of, I can't see why they would provide Blower Hours and Therapy Hours if both statistics are likely to be identically the same.

The last one is a 'Session Counter' which is described as a therapy session that lasted longer than 4 hours. Right now it's at 3. Except for the first 2 nights I have slept thought the night maybe waking up an hour before the alarm a few times. This would still put me past 4 hours.

Hmmmm, I would keep an eye on these figures, it might be they have a reset at 5 or 7 days, and that's why it's not showing the full counter. Likewise something similar might be happening with the Therapy hours in this way.

Until Monday what would I look for for leaks? There is no air coming out anywhere except the vents on the mask. The nasal pillow seals perfect and no air comes out from my nose. Seems like I would hear leaking with it on since the air shoots out when I take the mask off.

Most machines give a leak rate at either Litres per minute or Litres per second. You can usually see this on the LCD of the machine. Some machines like ResMed allow you to set the mask type and when you do this they know that a specific mask leaks maybe 30L/min so they then see what leaks over this rate and then only reports that as a leak. Other machines don't do this and report the total amount of leak rate irrespecitive of what is within tolerance levels of the mask.

If you have a choice and the machine is on loan, then I would request that you have a ResMed S9, or a Respironics because you'll have a better option of checking your stats on a daily basis.

Thanks
Dave