Am I being naughty?

[mavrick]

After my sleep study, my doc told me I responded really well to a pressure of 12. She said she would prescribe me 13 "just in case" which is what my S9 is set at. My first nights sleep wasn't very good as I woke up from the pressue after 3 hrs and took my mask off. Last night I played around and set my S9 to auto and from 10 to 14. I slept like a baby and saw my average pressure was 11.2 with 0.1 API for 6 hrs. Am I wrong for messing with my S9? Do you feel I should put it back to CPAP mode and take my perscription like a man? Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Wulfman]

It's YOUR therapy.


Den

[LinkC]

Are you wrong in changing your settings....or are you wrong in changing settings willy-nilly?

The answers are quite different. Changing your settings if fine IF you have tried the old setting long enough to stabilize things, AND you have a good reason to change them.

If your one night on APAP was good, I'd suggest leaving everything as it is for at least a week. (This assumes you have mask leaks under control.) THEN check your numbers and see where you stand. Patience is a virtue...

[Birddog]

I agree it's your therapy. I learned more from this site on how to manage my therapy and wrote my results in a logbook and when i saw my doctor and told her i tweaked the settings,many in the office were not happy,but my doctor supported and encouraged my participation in my treatment.One thing they were not crazy about was i was using it in cpap mode and wanted me to run in in auto mode and just widen the parameters as you did.Good luck to you and welcome to the forum!

[KatieW]

It seems quite reasonable to me. Your titration is just a one night snapshot of what pressure you needed that night. This is real life, and it can vary from one night to another--depending on temperature, humidity, stress levels, physical pain, what you ate/drank, medications, etc. So your set range should cover those changing needs, rather than using a fixed pressure of 13 cm, which may be higher than you need, for all night.

Some settings you can use for comfort are EPR (exhale relief) Normal and Fast, and 1, 2, 3 cm. And Ramp starting pressure, and time of ramp from 5-45 minutes. You can change it all, by going into the Clinical Menu. If you need a copy of the Clinical Guide, ask here, and someone can PM it to you.

[MarylandCPAPer]

Hi mavrick,

I applaud you on figuring out that APAP mode with the settings you are trying may work better for you. My CPAP / APAP journey has gone a similar path but I managed to get my sleep specialist and a primary care doctor on board to okay my move to APAP and recommend the setting range after a month of CPAP at a constant pressure that I found to generally be too high for me. I wish I had figured it out in less than a month!!

I agree with leaving the settings the same for at least a week to see how things go. I have had great results with APAP with a range of 6-15 (5-15 was the range recommended by the sleep specialist) for the last 3 months. Before APAP, CPAP at pressure 13 woke me up nightly feeling like I had a vicious leaf blower attached to my nose.

WIth a great data-capable machine like the S9, you are able to keep track of the results of your treament, which is important when using APAP. Also, keeping track of how you feel when awake is a good measure of how well your treatment is going. It's not just about numbers from the machine.

I hope you continue to have good results on APAP. Keep us posted on how things work out.

[echo]

Welcome to the Forum!

Start reading here : wiki/index.php/Reasons_to_Use_APAP