Apnea and Hypopnea Durations

[1210donna]

just found I had a hypopnea of 130 secs... what would that mean in SPo2 terms?

[1210donna]

On my sleep study report, it reports the average and maximum duration of my apneas and my hypopneas in addition to my AHI. I am curious to know what these statistics are for others. Although my OSA is mild I believe the duration of my events is long.

AHI 7.8
Apnea - average duration 53.6 seconds and longest duration 120.8 seconds
Hypopnea - average duration 33.1 seconds and longest duration 53.1 seconds


Thanks in advance!

Don't listen to them.

AHI 7.8 is normal. You probably just had a couple of hypopneas in REM which is why they want you to be titrated. The average apnea of 53.6 is either artifact or it was a transitional central that got flagged by the report menu. Either way, it's bogus. The hypopnea however is probably a bit more accurate. I'm guessing REM events 30secsonds a piece which isn't too bad but it will make you REM starved and sleepy. Five or ten years it could start developing into hypertension and cardio problems but for right now it's just going to cause sleep fragmentation. Longest Hypopnea duration 53.1, bogus once again. There is no way you are going to get a minute long hypopnea with an AHI of 7.8.

If you want something a bit more accurate, look at the sa02 graph and line it up with the sleep staging graph. See how the sa02 disturbances line up perfectly with REM? (or I should say 'Rem Attempts') those are your events.

the AHI is for the entire night... so one can have a low AHI for that night yet have had 1 or 2 extreme events
and if the CPAP isn't stopping an apnea/hypopnea that is longer than 30 secs it probably needs higher pressure to do the job consistently

[Julie]

Donna - you're writing in a 3 yr old thread (start a new one), and Calist was a proven troll who was banned from the forum back then. Try again with a new thread.

[JDS74]

Not to hijack this thread- but am curious if there is any way to read the length of OA and H on a Resmed M series machine using Encore Viewer? I only see short on wide green dashes etc.

I don't think so. Encore Viewer just shows the summary type of graph and not the details of the breathing wave forms.
For that, you could use SleepyHead, Encore Pro, or Encore Basic that will allow you to see the details of breathing during an apnea.

I use Encore Pro and it shows apneas clearly and, for clear airway apneas, it is easy to measure the length. My machine creates a short pressure pulse as it tries to figure out whether the lack of breathing is obstructive or central. These pulses, at least on my machine, are 8 seconds apart so it is easy to just count them and multiply by 8.

Hypponeas are a little trickier as you are going to have to judge the boundaries of each event. Encore shows the breathing patterns for six minutes per horizontal graph with tick marks at one minute intervals. From there, view an event at 200% and it should be relatively easy to estimate the duration.

SleepyHead allows you to zoom in on an event and see how long it takes. The display is a little better in the details so it is easier to measure one event. It doesn't have any display mode that lets you get details for all events like the waveform display from Encore so you will need to look at each event separately. My version is quite old so there my be better displays in the current version. Users of the current version may be able to tell you in better detail how to measure all of them more quickly.

[Pugsy]

Razorback wrote:Not to hijack this thread- but am curious if there is any way to read the length of OA and H on a Resmed M series machine using Encore Viewer? I only see short on wide green dashes etc.



I don't think so. Encore Viewer just shows the summary type of graph and not the details of the breathing wave forms.
For that, you could use SleepyHead, Encore Pro, or Encore Basic that will allow you to see the details of breathing during an apnea.

Normally I wouldn't respond to an old thread like this that has been resurrected but just wanted to clarify something in case another M series machine user comes along and reads this thread.
SleepyHead won't work with M series machines and even if it did the machine doesn't gather the data necessary to view wave form graphs to get an idea of how long any flagged event may last. So no sense in trying SleepyHead or the other Encore products because the M series machines doesn't gather the data that is needed to evaluate event duration.
One needs the PR System One machine model 450 and above to obtain that bit of data.

[DonaldST]

Donna - you're writing in a 3 yr old thread (start a new one), and Calist was a proven troll who was banned from the forum back then. Try again with a new thread.

A PROVEN troll wow who was that guy Julie?