Blocked nose can high hypopnoea?

[derek70]

My first night using Nasal Mask but with a little stuffy nose.

AI= 0.3
HI=12.1


Is my blocked nose causing high hypopnoea?
I have rinitis and desviated septum.

[Pugsy]

Unknown.
There is no way to know for sure just how much a blocked nose is impacting things.
The S8 machines were known for aggressively scoring Hyponeas anyway and it maybe be possible that air movement restriction due to swollen nasal tissues (causing the congestion) could be misinterpreted by the machine. Best you can do is eliminate the congestion and see how much the Hyponeas reduce.

[derek70]

Thank you, pugsy.
I'll eliminate my nasal congestion and check data again.

It's odd, when a checked my data with 11 minutes of usage, there a AHI=12.
I wasn't even sleeping.

[Pugsy]

It's odd, when a checked my data with 11 minutes of usage, there a AHI=12.
I wasn't even sleeping.

The machine doesn't know if you are awake or not and often will give false readings while awake. All machines can do this.
Your best thing is to just totally remove that awake time from your data if you are for sure you were awake. So you need to manually figure your data as best you can and not count those 11 minutes and not count those events that lead to the AHI of 12 during that time frame.

I have to do this sometimes for my "wake up time" data. Often I lay there awake with eyes closed and thinking about getting up and tossing and turning and lots of ugly stuff shows up during that 30 minutes or so and I know I was awake. I just mentally toss that time and that data out the window and base my mental figures on sleep time time data.

[robysue]

It's odd, when a checked my data with 11 minutes of usage, there a AHI=12.
I wasn't even sleeping.

Unlike Santa Clause, your CPAP machine does not know when you are sleeping or know when you are awake. It only knows when you are using the machine and detects periods of breathing that match its algorithm for scoring events.

So whenever there's any breathing pattern that satisfies the machine's (proprietary) algorithm for detecting an apnea or hypopnea, the machine flags the event. And wakeful breathing is much less regular than sleep breathing, so it's not uncommon for a CPAP machine to trigger events when we're awake and using the machine.

And if you used the machine for 11 minutes, then it doesn't take very many events to trigger an AHI =12. Here's why:

AHI = (number of events recorded)/(time machine was running in HOURS)

Hence,

AHI*(time machine was running in HOURS) = number of events recorded.


Your "AHI" was 12 and the machine was running for 11 minutes. Eleven minutes equals 11/60 hours. So the approximate number of events recorded during those 11 minutes is found by:

number of events = 12*(11/60) = 11/5 = 2.2

Because of the decimal and the machine's tendencies to round everything to one decimal place, which does create round off error, we can conclude that you most likely had two or three events recorded during those eleven minutes of WAKE breathing. Note 2/(11/60) = 120/11 = 10.9 and 3/(11/60) = 180/11 = 16.4. So my guess is that the machine was running for a bit less than 11 minutes and you only had two "events" during this period of WAKE breathing. (Note that 2 events recorded in 10 minutes of run time would give an AHI = 2/(10/60) = 12.)

And how could your machine record two or three events while you were wide awake and breathing with the machine? Our WAKE breathing is much more erratic than our sleep breathing. We control our WAKE breathing even if we don't realize it. We sigh, we temporarily hold our breath while concentrating on something. We clear our throats. We decide to swallow for some reason. Two or three "events" during this eleven minute period could easily be explained if you simply sighed a couple of times deeply: A deep inhale/exhale for each sigh artificially increases the moving average "baseline" for how much air is going into/out of your lungs. And combine that with the tendency for the breaths following a large sigh to be smaller than "normal" to begin with, and you've got a recipe for a machine scored hypopnea.

This lesson in basic arithmetic brought to you by robysue, the friendly math prof.

[n0hardmask]

Unlike Santa Clause, your CPAP machine does not know when you are sleeping or know when you are awake. It only knows when you are using the machine and detects periods of breathing that match its algorithm for scoring events.

This lesson in basic arithmetic brought to you by robysue, the friendly math prof.

I enjoyed your reply RobySue. Seems you're not only a decent math instructor, but quite a story teller as well.
HOHOHO Merry 16th day of CHRISTmas to You.

[chunkyfrog]

I wonder if yawns are recorded as anything.
When I'm sleepy, I yawn.
Some are long ones.

[JayC]

I am thinking it can.....

I have had quite a run of what I believe to be some type of allergies for the majority of 2011. Mind you, *no* sinus infections or anything like in the past. But lots of swollen nasal passages, sometimes overproduction of mucus, sometimes runny nose......and way too much sneezing! And when I say swollen passages, they are not actually blocked, but certainly the air flow is decreased!

My numbers are way out of whack, and my hypopneas are sometimes double digit! Sometimes, my pressure gets so high I have to stop and start machine because it is reacting to some "event" and the pressure gets to the top in the first 5 minutes!! I don't believe this to be a faulty machine...but some change in my body that the machine is getting bothered by.

I will be getting a referral to an ear/nost/throat doc soon, so should have some good input. I will update once that happens....

J

[derek70]

And how could your machine record two or three events while you were wide awake and breathing with the machine? Our WAKE breathing is much more erratic than our sleep breathing. We control our WAKE breathing even if we don't realize it. We sigh, we temporarily hold our breath while concentrating on something. We clear our throats. We decide to swallow for some reason. Two or three "events" during this eleven minute period could easily be explained if you simply sighed a couple of times deeply: A deep inhale/exhale for each sigh artificially increases the moving average "baseline" for how much air is going into/out of your lungs. And combine that with the tendency for the breaths following a large sigh to be smaller than "normal" to begin with, and you've got a recipe for a machine scored hypopnea.

Should a event last more than 10 second to be recorded as apnea/hypopnea by the machine ??
If my machine recorded 2 events in 11 minutes when I'm awake I think it's very sensitive.
Don't think If will take HI in account from now on.

If I set ramp/settling, the machine record events during thios period?

This lesson in basic arithmetic brought to you by robysue, the friendly math prof.

Thank you, robysue, for the lesson.




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