Ineffective CPAP for Sleep Apnea

[imbart]

I have a situation I’d love some advice on: A year ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I understand the gold standard for treatment is CPAP, which explains why that was the first treatment tried. The problem is this – the CPAP seems to have no effect on me. In addition to not feeling any more rested when I use it, I have seen the charts from the three CPAP titrations I’ve done over the past year – on or off and regardless of the pressure setting, my sleep pattern does not improve. My doctors have been puzzled, and don’t know what else to do. Are there others out there who have experienced this? Is there an alternate treatment that I can try? I’d appreciate any suggestions anyone has.

[Emilia]

You will need to provide us with a lot more information to advise you.

1. Please take a minute to go up to the User Control Panel (under search, top left) and then to your Profile and then Edit Equipment. Choose your gear from the pull down menus and the choose to show those in TEXT, not pictures. This will put your equipment at the bottom of every post your write automatically, like mine below. Those with the same equipment can help you better than having to constantly ask you what you use!

2. Tell us what your sleep study diagnosis was....in terms of level of severity, titrated pressure, types of apnea you exhibited, study AHI, etc.

3. Are you experiencing leaks from your mask? How many types of masks have you tried?

4. If you have software to monitor your therapy, have you done so? If so, what can you share about your results? If not, is your machine capable to providing efficacy data?

5. You referred to a sleep pattern... can you explain what you mean by this in greater detail?

Once we know your equipment and your Dx and Rx, those here with the same equipment, mask, software can guide you to find out why needs to be done to provide more effective therapy.