ASV Sleep Study and Titration

[JDS74]

After almost three years on auto BiPap having only missed 3 nights (two of those in the emergency room), I'm voluntarily missing another night.

Tonight is my ASV sleep study to see if an ASV machine can help with my intermittent Cheyne-Stokes and central apneas.

I hope I wake up in the morning feeling rested and refreshed.

Cheers to everybody, especially JohnB and Pugsy who have given me such good advice.

[oak]

Good luck! Here's hoping your night is restful..as restful as sleeping in a lab can be...

[STL Mark]

The ASV units are wonderful machines. If you can get your insurance to pay for it that makes it even better. Either way I hope your night at the sleep lab is easy on you and that they get the information they need to set it up properly.

[JDS74]

Well here I am, checked in and waiting to suit up.

They were a little surprised that I brought my own mask and pulse oximeter. I'm going to check its accuracy against the lab's unit. Hopefully the numbers will be the same.

This lab uses ResMed equipment so the difference will be interesting.

Hope to be able to report a great night's sleep in the morning.

Night, night all.

[JohnBFisher]

Hope your night of sleep goes well. It can be quite a challenge to sleep with an ASV unit. But once you get used to it, there's NO going back.

Insurance should cover it, though it sometimes requires a doctor to be pretty stern about the medical necessity. Normally, if there are central apneas and/or Cheyne-Stokes Respiration, it's definitely considered medically necessary.

Good luck!

[JDS74]

Well, I'm home after a very interesting evening.
The started the titration at an IPAP quite a bit below my normal IPAP so the first hour or two were challenging as the ASV machine responded to my apneas - I think the top pressure was too high - it felt like I was a balloon being blown up.

[edit]During that period, there was a little areophagia as a result of the pressure. So I burped some to fix that.

After the pressure got adjusted and the system got used to my breathing patterns, things got a lot better. According to my pulse-oximeter, after that time my SpO2 never went below 95% which for me is a really good thing. Before that time there were several that dropped to 85% or so.

The nice thing was that between midnight and 5:15 AM I slept straight through except for a couple of my episodes that wake me for a few minutes. The ASV activity during that period didn't wake me at all .

So it looks like I will be able to adapt pretty easily if I can adjust the ramp setting long enough to get asleep the first time.

I intend to get a Respironics 960 with heated hose. Does anyone use one of those and know if the ramp feature of the BiPap systems is carried forward to the ASV ones?

The second thing that turned out to be important is the number of times my CMS-50F pulse-oximeter reported finger out. Is there a way to stop that short of finding a different finger sensor? If not, then the Broadband/Oximetry accessory will have to be the way to go since better finger sensors will be available for it.

[JohnBFisher]

... Does anyone use one of those and know if the ramp feature of the BiPap systems is carried forward to the ASV ones? ...

Glad to hear your sleep study went well. The ramp feature is available on that model. I think it's available on the earlier model, though I do not use it. You will find that you will become so adjusted to the pressure changes as you fall asleep that you won't notice it anymore. Until then, the ramp definitely helps.

[sleepinow]

Yea I can confirm that the 950 model does indeed have the ramp feature. Source, I own one

You are bettet of with the 960 because of the heated hose option. It can help your therapy alot.

[JDS74]

An additional comment on the sleep study. I used my own Oracle 2 mask for the study and in the beginning of the titration, I believe the machine found something to correct and hit me with a 25 cm H20 pressure to get me going again. That was a little uncomfortable but the good news was there were no mask leaks at all for the whole night. So from that perspective, I'm hoping to not have to deal with leaks if I get prescribed with and ASV machine.