will centrals be picked up by apap or encore software?

[Fubar2u]

Last sleep study said I had a massive number of centrals but all is well because of cpap therapy took care of them. 5 year cpap user and was at a high of 11cm h2o machine was changed to 15cm!
got a apap loaner and so far high is under 12cm 95% 9.6cm.
My concern is the apap picking up the centrals if they are there and would going with a respironcs pro model using softwar give me enough info to keep a good long term results?

I'll post my studies soon including the apap that ends tonight a one week trial I had a couple adult beverages one night to get real world data. l

[Goofproof]

You would have better luck in the real world of XPAP treatment to refrain from doing things that permote poor treatment, and you may fall down less too. Jim

[brasshopper]

Central Apnea happens when you simply don't breathe.

There is no blockage, you just don't breathe. The lowered O2 levels will eventually wake you - just as a obstructive apnea will. They might be associated with alcohol, sleep meds or raised CPAP pressures. They might just happen because you are you.

I used my pulse oximeter last night for the first time with the serial port connected - I had only one real serious desaturation - I got down to 81% - and you could see my pulse rate go up - probably because I woke up - before the oxygenated blood got to the finger that was being monitored. I have tried holding my breath to reduce saturation and I can't get to 81% - so I assume that I was very uncomfortable and that is what woke me.

I was always under the impression that the Respironics software called centrals non-responsive - since opening your airway with more pressure won't start you breathing when the airway is not blocked in the first place.

My friend tells me that when I stop breathing it wakes her up and and she can hear the apap crank up the pressure and then I start breathing again. Sometimes it takes what seems to her as a very long time. I assume that this is during one of her usual awake periods.

Here is the output from the Pulse Oximeter. I set the clock before the night and cleared the memory - I am going to try and match this to the memory - but I *think* it is clear from the direct output what happened. Here is the raw output with the unprintable characters and checksum characters removed - the explanation is at the end - but the first two fields - Rnnn - heart rate and Snnn - saturation percentage - are the key ones - the T parameter is time - hhmmss. Read the data and see if your guess matches mine.

Code: Select all

R054S100P005L038H097O090A000M011T041100Q100
R053S100P009L038H097O090A000M011T041110Q100
R056S096P020L038H097O090A000M011T041120Q100
R062S091P018L038H097O090A000M011T041130Q100
R060S095P021L038H097O090A000M011T041140Q100
R056S098P023L038H097O090A000M011T041150Q100
R057S095P061L038H097O090A000M011T041200Q100
R064S089P063L038H097O090A004M011T041208Q100
R067S088P066L038H097O090A004M011T041210Q100
R070S086P038L038H097O090A004M011T041220Q100
R069S087P015L038H097O090A004M011T041230Q100
R064S087P100L038H097O090A004M011T041240Q100
R057S081P009L038H097O090A004M011T041250Q100
R060S090P011L038H097O090A000M011T041255Q100
R060S092P019L038H097O090A000M011T041300Q100
R058S098P015L038H097O090A000M011T041310Q100
R055S100P014L038H097O090A000M011T041320Q100

Again, R is heart rate, S is Saturation, P is pulse strength, H, O, are limits, A is a flag. M is another flag. T is time (the 81% sat happened at 4:12 am and 50 seconds) - the compact computer output mode on the Nellcor N-200 gives you a line every 10 seconds rather than once a minute - whether you are in alarm or out of alarm. So I believe that there was an alarm at 4:12:08 when I dropped below 90% sat and another special event at 4:12:55 when I got back above 90. My heart rate has been in the 50's most of the night, so I am probably altready rousing at 4:12:08. I have probably already taken breaths at 4:12:40 and am on my way back to sleep with the oxygenated blood being pumped around my body.

I think that there is a good chance that this was a central. I have no idea for sure - this is the really extreme desat from last night but there are some other cycling desats - but there is no evidence of rousing from the pulse - which might mean that the APAP fixed them.

Anyway, this is what you can learn from a recording pulse oximeter - or what you can guess at least. I can't correlate this with any particular event or rise in pressure from the APAP.