Post Op anesthesia pain meds and sleep apnea

[POTF]

Help! I am going into surgery tomorrow and in the past due to sleep apnea and my current pressures on my machine I don’t do well coming out of anesthesia or taking pain medication. I am currently on a resumes aircurve 10 vauto 15/6 pressure support =5. In normal sleep I don’t go above 13 or above 6.2. I am trying to figure out giving myself enough support to overcome the respiratory suppression effects of pain meds and the anesthesia when in post op. i am considering raising my epap min. to 8 and pressure support to 6. Anyone else have issues like this or had to raise pressures to overcome the effects of pain meds?

[Pugsy]

I have had 2 surgeries in the past 12 months requiring general anesthesia and pain meds...and none of the issues you are worried about happened.

I don't recommend increasing pressure support unless you know for sure that more pressure support won't/doesn't trigger centrals....because that's a very real potential problem with PS of 6.

I advise doing nothing special and when using your machine at home after the surgery THEN you evaluate the detailed data to see if something is a problem or not.

FWIW....using 6 PS isn't enough to deal with any centrals that might pop up because of suppressed respiration anyway.
You would most likely need a lot more PS and that's a for sure recipe for carbon dioxide wash out which will result in centrals popping up. Your machine can't really deal with centrals...if they should happen and there's no sure fire guarantee that there will be a problem anyway.

Cross that bridge if/when you come to it.

[Miss Emerita]

Be sure to tell the anesthesiologist everything you've written here. He/she can arrange to have you monitored especially carefully in the recovery room and to take steps if your respiration becomes seriously slowed down.

[KathyJL]

I second Miss Emerita's post. I had complications in surgery because I forgot to mention sleep apnea (and anesthesiologist didn’t ask).

[LSAT]

I don't use the AirCurve, but I just had surgery and the first night in the hospital I had no problem with my 12/20 pressure...EPR 2.

[chunkyfrog]

Tell the anesthesiologist about all of your concerns.
Best of all, put it in writing; and leave nothing out.
I always tell them about the time I was intubated while still conscious.
That gets their attention every time.
Edit: Oh, you had surgery TODAY! Hope you came through it OK.
Please let us know how it went.