Regular, frequent SpO2 drops

[AndyTr]

Hi

I've been using a CPAP for about 2.5 years (ResMed S9 auto + F20 mask). I was diagnosed with "mild" sleep apnea and had been getting a nightly AHI of about 0.1 to 0.6 up until recently. As of the 17th December, SleepyHead shows my AHI suddenly shot up to between 1.0 to 2.4 per night, with a peak AHI during the night being anywhere from 5, right up to 12 on occasion.

While the CPAP had originally cured the constant confusion and terrible bad temper I had slowly progressed into beforehand, I'm still constantly exhausted, with 4 out of 7 days feeling stressed and on edge for no reason. This has become particularly prevalent since the 17th December when my AHI shot up overnight. I have no idea what caused this, but can't get back to how it was.

The remaining problem is definitely sleep related (not depression, etc), so I've started using SleepyHead to read the data off my machine's SD card, bought myself a CMS50i pulseox and positioned a night vision camera at myself in bed to record my movements. I've now done two nights with this setup and have some odd results.

Attached are screen shots of my pulseox graphs from last night, which show incredibly regular dips of around 5% in my SpO2 with corresponding pulse increases. Does anybody know why this might be happening, please?

NB: The CMS50i time frame appears to be miles off. The graph starts at about 10pm, which is roughly when I started the pulseox recording session, but I actually turned it off around 7:20am, whereas the graph goes up to 12:52pm. That's quite a big time drift, which I can't explain.

Does anybody have any help or advice, please?

[HoseCrusher]

I think there is something wrong with either your oximeter or the way SleepyHead is presenting it.

In your detailed view note the sudden drop in O2. The body doesn't work that way. Usually there is a ramped drop followed by a sudden rise when you gasp for air. In the mean time your heart rate should ramp up followed by a ramp down.

In addition this doesn't happen regularly 3 - 4 times an hour as your graphs are showing.

At this point you should do a test for something like 15 - 30 minutes while you are awake and resting. Watch a movie or read a book for awhile and record while you are doing that.

Another option is to take your unit to your doctors office and check to see if it is giving similar values to what you are reading. If you do that, bring this chart along for discussion.

[palerider]

Do you see the same data anomalies if you use the CMS software to look at the data?

[AmSleepnBetta]

When I switched to a different version of SleepyHead I suddenly experienced the kind of almost perfect regularity you show when using the SleepyHead import function (or SH's import-equivalent function, whatever it is called). A forum member advised me that I would need to use the SpO2 program to Save my SpO2-PR-PI file, which I could then (and still do) pull into SleepyHead if I want it there.

The changed SH version would no longer pull a night's data directly from my CMS50I.