Mouth Breathing Question

Hello, I have recently switched over to a nasal pillow (Swift FX) and I really like it. Much more comfortable than the full face masks (over and under the nose) and leaking has been resolved. The big question for me is how do I know if I'm mouth breathing while using the nasal pillow thus preventing the CPAP benefits. I can view my ResMed Autoset data in Oscar and I really enjoying viewing and tracking my sleep data.

My question, is there a way to view my Oscar data to see if I'm mouth breathing?

Thanks!

Try posting a recent daily chart. Please include the left panel with the calendar and pie chart turned off, and of course be sure to include the leak graph along with Events, Flow Rate, Pressure, Snores, and (if you have a ResMed machine) Flow Limitations.

As requested, here is a screen shot. My wife thought I was month breathing starting at 1:30am.

Mouth breathing will show up as leak line increase on the leak graph. Sometimes it's a big increase and sometimes not much of an increase. Just depends on how much mouth breathing is going on. It's not always bad enough to negatively impact the actual therapy itself.

Don't know for sure if you are mouth breathing with those leaks (could also simply be some mask movement leaking) but they are well below the machine's ability to compensate for the leak (no matter what caused it) and I wouldn't worry about it as long as I was sleeping through it and feeling decent.
Now if any leak wakes us up...needs to be fixed no matter how big or little or whatever the cause...because it is messing with sleep.

If that were my report (and I guarantee that it is prettier than mine was last night) and I slept decently and feel decent then I would shrug my shoulders and move on.

The 2 very brief spikes above the red line...not prolonged near enough to make any sort of negative impact IMHO. Looks more like a quick refitting of the mask to me than mouth breathing anyway. You may or may not remember it.

Thank you for the feedback Pugsy. You inspired me to try a nasal pillow and it looks to be a game-changer for me. Thank you for that.

Having tried so many masks, my advice to anyone is see if the nasal pillow works for you. For me, its the most comfortable given its light weight, etc. And if you think about it, the nasal pillow just has to seal your nostril openings. That's a much more defined and smaller space thus less leak potential. Plus your nostril openings don't change as you move from side to side. For the full face masks, my cheeks pushed out, my chin shifted, etc. Thus the leaks. I suspect they start you out on a full face mask because it doesn't matter if your a mouth breather and they (initial supplier) don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring that out. e.g. give them a mask and move on. Because I hope other newbies read this, I would like to say that the nasal pillow is the way to go if it works for you. Definitely worth a try. IMHO.

cmaustin wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:39 am

I suspect they start you out on a full face mask because it doesn't matter if your a mouth breather and they (initial supplier) don't want to deal with the hassle of figuring that out. e.g. give them a mask and move on.

Laziness....pure old laziness IMHO.
Either that or pure old stupidity...
or don't really give a crap attitude.