How do you interpret Leak numbers?

[pippincat]

Hello all,

Newbie here. I have a RemStar Pro MSeries. On the display it shows "System Leak" and gives a 7 day and 30 day average in L/min units. How do you interpret the number? When is it significant? How do I know that I am not having too big a leak from the nasal pillows from the OptLife mask? I would think the AHI average from the machine is more significant to determine if all is well. Is that a correct interpretation? Sorry for all the questions. It is just that I been on CPAP for almost a month and I am just recently struggling with the mask and having some leaks.

Thanks
pippincat

[RiverDave]

Pippincat,

Maintaining fairly low leak rates is pretty important. From what has been posted on this site" the higher your leak rate, the less effective your treatment becomes. You are correct: AHI is the gold standard for measuring treatment success, but high leak rates can interfere with your machine's method of determining when you are having respiratory events and how it responds to them.

As far as I can tell, there is no hard and fast rule about what leak rate starts interfering with treatment. The generality seems to be to keep the leak rate as low as you reasonably can.

Each mask has a specific leak rate for a given pressure. This information is found in the manual that came with your interface. Others with more experience with different types of masks will be better able to advise you as to what is an acceptable leak rate.

Good Luck,

[Snoredog]

that number should match the mask "flow chart" if there are no leaks for your 90% pressure.

So you find the sheet that came with you mask it will have a flow curve graph, you find your 90% say it is 10 cm, you then look at the flow rate in Liters per minute, most mask will be in the 28-32L/m range for that pressure.

The amount of air that intentionally leaks from the mask exhaust holes is call the intentional leak (flow rate shown on that chart at a given pressure).

So if your LCD avg says 48L/m and your mask chart says 32L/m then you subtract the intentional leak from the LCD value and this the actual amount of leak between the mask and your face/mouth breathing.

[dsm]

[quote="pippincat"]Hello all,

Newbie here. I have a RemStar Pro MSeries. On the display it shows "System Leak" and gives a 7 day and 30 day average in L/min units. How do you interpret the number? When is it significant? How do I know that I am not having too big a leak from the nasal pillows from the OptLife mask? I would think the AHI average from the machine is more significant to determine if all is well. Is that a correct interpretation? Sorry for all the questions. It is just that I been on CPAP for almost a month and I am just recently struggling with the mask and having some leaks.

Thanks
pippincat