New CPAP User

Hi Everyone,

I was recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnoea with an AHI of 52.

I've been given a Lowenstein Prisma Smart Auto, with humidifyer & a resmed airfit f20.

The Dr set machine to APAP with min of 4 to max 15, but 4 was too low for me (felt like not getting enough air), so I've upped it to 8.5

I'm struggling to get my AHI under control & see really high flow limitation numbers along with continued OA even at max pressure.

I was thinking my pressure ranges are too low & maybe I should increase max to 20 & see if this helps.

I've attached an Oscar screenshot from last night, apologies if this is in the wrong format.

Any advice would be appreciated!

If it were me I'd go back to the doctor and see if you can get a real sleep lab titration, at least if you have insurance to cover it. AHI of 9.9 is double the minimum that's considered successful treatment, and high enough to be prescribed a machine if you didn't have one. You have more airway (central) apneas than obstructive apneas. This is my condition, complex apnea. A simple APAP machine may not be the best choice. My initial numbers weren't much different than yours, I can get by with an APAP but I didn't get there until I had a couple real lab studies. There is only so much you can do on your own. Once things are under control you can fine tune and make meaningful improvements, but I don't think you are close enough to do it on your own.

How are you sleeping? Soundly for the most part or is your sleep fragmented with multiple wake ups?

Where are you located? Your IP address points to London....is that where you are?

Hi,

Yes I'm in the UK.

I'm messing around with masks at the moment due to comfort & leakage. The F20 seems to be the best one so far.

In general I'm sleeping fairly well, but disheartening to see such poor numbers in the morning.

My best night was 9-16 pressure range with an ahi of 5.63, 9mins in apnoea, but with 1hr 26 mins of flow limitation.

I wonder if I set max to 20 for a few nights & see how that goes. My 95% is pretty much always 15, with a 99.5 of 15 as well.