OPTIMAL CPAP PRESSURE SETTING

[samir]

Hi Team,

I am a newbie in this forum and find your discussions very helpful. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea on December 2016 and began using CPAP machine around feb 2017. I use a dreamstation auto CPAP machine together with a dreamwear nasal mask. Straight to my question, There is no sleep study clinic in my area and hence determining the optimal pressure setting is a challenge. i have been adjusting my pressure settings depending on "How do i feel". My min pressure is currently 8.5 and my AHI varies between 2-5. However with an increase in pressure, my AHI raises steadily too. can't understand why so?

How do i determine the optimal pressure without a sleep clinc
why does my AHI increase with an increase in pressure?

[Pugsy]

There's more to an AHI than the whole number.
The AHI is made up of 3 types of event categories and it's important to understand those 3 categories because not all of them will respond by a reduction in numbers with more pressure and sometimes more pressure can create a situation where more events are caused.

ClearAiray (that's what Respironics calls central) apnea events and more pressure from you machine won't fix/reduce them because the airway is already open. So if your AHI is primarily Central in nature...more pressure isn't the answer.

Now the other 2 categories are Obstructive in nature.
OA...Obstructive Apneas and hyponeas and they are fixable with a pressure increase of some sort.

So what is your AHI composed of?

[Julie]

What about the high setting?

Are you using the EPR (exhale pressure relief feature)? If you have it on, your AHI is likely to read 1-2 cms higher than it would if you don't use it, though that's not a reason to not use it if you need it. Do you take any meds?

We can tell a lot more about what's going on if you use Sleepyhead... here's the info -

https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead
https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead/shorganize