Mask Leakage vs. AHI

[cpcajd]

I was moved from APAP with a nasal mask to CPAP with nasal pillows a little over a leak ago. I had a serious issue before with leakage and an average AHI of 1.5-2.0. Now on CPAP with the nasal pillows I have about a 0.5 AHI. However, there is a lot more of leakage. If my AHI is low, what is the big deal of leakage on my mask?

[Pugsy]

It all depends on just how bad the "serious leakage is"....if it is really bad then the machine can't sense the apnea events and so can't record them and the end result is a nice low AHI because the machine is clueless as to what is going on.

So...how bad is the leak? Over 24 L/min? If so, for how long? Using the software to evaluate leaks or just going by the Mr Smiley or Mr Frowny on the S9?

I am using a S9 right now...sometimes my leaks go above 24 L/min for maybe 10 minutes which I don't worry about.
I have found that leaks above 30 L/Min will affect how the machine reports events so I would worry about those if I spent much time up there.
It all depends on how much "big" leak and how long you stay up there in big leak territory.
If just going by the 95% number off the LCD screen...don't. It doesn't always tell the entire story and can make things look worse than it is.
The 95% number thing just means "At or Below" that number. People tend to forget the "or below" part of the definition. When 95% numbers are ugly...a person needs to look at the leak graphs to see just how ugly things really were.