Best Mask for Deviated Septum / Stuffy Nose

Right now I am using the ResMed AirFit N10 nasal mask but am thinking of switching over and trying a nasal pillows mask, I feel the airfit 10 is pushing down on my side nasal passages cuasing more congestion … I have tried the full mask and cannot get used to it so what masks are best for someone who has a dev septum and allergies and stuffiness?

tx in advance !

Allergies and stuffiness may be relieved by lowering your humidity level, especially if you're in a relatively humid area anyway.

Any of the nasal pillow masks would work well with your issues. There's not really one that is any better than the other for those specific issues. It all comes down to your own preferences, wants and needs.

You might read this that Perrybucsdad wrote a while back
viewtopic/p663440/Mouth-Breathers.html#p663440
I don't think he had allergy issues but he did have a deviated septum and I nearly had to twist his arm off just to get him to try nasal pillows. He just thought it wouldn't work because someone had told him that pillows wouldn't work.
This was long before the ResMed P10 was released which I think is always a good nasal pillow mask for new to pillows users to try.
It's about as minimal as it can get and the venting is next to silent and so diffused you can't even feel it unless your hand is about an inch from the vent holes.

The Swift FX is similar and more adjustable probably in terms of straps but the venting isn't diffused at all.
So it really all depends on what looks interesting to you and what you think might benefit you.

Thanks, I think I am going to give the pillows a try .. if their isn't another better route, I think I tried them a long time ago and the thing I did remember was it caused some irritation around my nose , I think that's why I gave up on them then ..

sidesleeper7 wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:05 am

Thanks, I think I am going to give the pillows a try .. if their isn't another better route, I think I tried them a long time ago and the thing I did remember was it caused some irritation around my nose , I think that's why I gave up on them then ..

For the nose irritation a spot of Lanisol cream from the pharmacy

I think it is almost impossible to recommend a best mask because so much of it has to do with the shape of your head and nostrils. That being said, I do currently like the DreamWear.

The ResMed P10 is about as safe a choice to "try" a nasal mask as there is. Very low irritation compared to some others. Very good at sealing and holds the seal very well for side sleepers.

For what it is worth, I have found the nasal masks with pillows to be all I need even with a bad cold. The slight pressure opens the airways. I breathe better with the mask on than without it! Hard to carry it with me all day......

sidesleeper7 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 23, 2019 7:22 pm

dev septum and allergies and stuffiness

Are you under the care of an ENT? There are good treatments.

I have a badly-deviated septum. The shape of my nose isn’t great even if the septum was straight. Although my nostrils are very large, they are also quite narrow. The turbinates in my nose are often swollen.

I can’t tolerate any mechanical pressure at all on or near the sides of my nose.

A full-face or nasal mask will close off my sinuses almost completely. I’ve had the best luck with a P30i pillow mask. I like the top hose, and the frame seems to keep it fairly stable. I haven’t tried the P10, but I think the pillow design is similar.

The F30 hybrid is also good, but it can be finicky.

Hi, sorry for necro, are you a side sleeper?

I have a deviated septum that has been described as the Elder Wand from Harry Potter where every bump is a healed break. I wear the Resmed Airfit F40 hybrid full-face mask but almost exclusively nose-breathe thanks to Intake Breathing Bands: my link will get you 20% off the Starter Pack.

For somebody who think this is too long, stop being cranky. These issues of getting the right settings is not always easy. And sometimes somebody can pick up something from somebody else who was successful or at least hopeful. If you don't like to read long postings, get yourself a page reader app which generally is part of your operating system either from Apple or Samsung I think Samsung's is called select to speak. I don't know what apple calls there is but they have one also And especially with these small fonts on your phone it's so much easier to listen and sometimes you can listen even twice.

I have a deviated septum also, but it is not bad enough that anyone suggested surgery. I used the AirFit P10 and then switched to the P30i, which seemed to be more stable for me. Then, all of a sudden, things got worse. Where I used to have AHIs from 0.5 to 5, my AHIs went up to 7 and higher, and I have no clue why. I always had large leaks ranging from 26 to 50, and I was told that my AHIs might even be worse than what the AirCurve 11 was picking up.

​So, I switched to the new AirFit F20—first with the plastic cushion, then with the cloth cushion. At times it was doing better and I was having leaks of 0, but my AHIs were probably running between 7 and 20. When I complained to the doctor, they said maybe I'd be better off with a CPAP machine. They didn't know why I was on a BiPAP machine to begin with. It is something I got back in 2003 with my first Sullivan BiPAP, which they gave me because I wasn't able to sleep during the initial sleep study. They just set it to 12 and 8, which was the standard setup back then when they didn't know what else to do. Of course, those early machines weren't self-titrating.

​Next, I tried increasing my settings on my own, experimenting with 15 to 7 with a Pressure Support (PS) of 4, and 17 to 7 with a PS of 5. At those higher settings, I was frequently hitting the top limit of 17; you could see the machine would have gone higher if I had set it to 20.

​My sleep doctor finally took a look at the data and paperwork, and he told me to go back to the P30i and return to the previous settings of 15 to 7 with a PS of 4. He also noted that when I set up the machine, even though it is a nasal mask, I should select the "full face mask" setting in the options.

​Once I did that, things really started to look pretty good. Something caused me to keep my mouth shut better when I was sleeping on my back, which I was really trying hard to do. Full face masks just don't work for me, and I don't think they ever have because they slide up my face. For some reason, when I use a full face mask, I generate a lot of saliva, which doesn't seem to happen with the nasal pillows.
​Now I am hovering around 2 AHIs, plus or minus 1.5. One thing that I think has helped is that before I go to sleep, I use the NeilMed nasal irrigation, creating about 1 and a quarter bottles of solution. That has kept the base AHI rating down. The one thing that surprised me, though, is that I am seeing central apneas, which I really never used to have a problem with. They are almost always the highest index on the report.

​Last night was a good night: my total AHI was 3.78, which consisted of a central apnea index (CAI) of 2.16, an obstructive apnea index (OAI) of 1.08, hypopneas at 0.36, and an unclassified apnea index (UAI) of 0.18. Had I slept longer, those numbers would have come down, because if you look at the graph, a large portion of the central apneas happen right at the very beginning of the night before I eventually fall asleep. According to data online, a central AHI of less than 5 is generally fine, while 10 or more is trouble. They also say that your body has to get used to these changes, and one reason you can get treatment-emergent central apneas is from pressure that is too high. Since I went from 15 up to 17, that could have caused some of those increases.

​As my doctor said, you have to give this a chance, and it was smart to go back to the prior settings and the P30i. The AHIs are slightly higher than before, but I'm also having lower leak rates than I used to—down to around 10, a number I've never seen outside of the AirFit F20 where I was recording 0 leaks. Maybe this current average of two to three AHIs a night is just more accurate than what I was seeing before because the lower leaks mean the machine is actually reading the data correctly.

​I truly believe that full face masks aren't for me. I remember having the old, bulky ResMed full face mask when I was using the Mirage Activa, and switching to it was horrendous. Then I got one from Fisher & Paykel, and that was even more disastrous; it caused my AHIs to spike into the high 20s and low 30s, which is basically the same baseline I get when sleeping without a mask at all.
​Currently, I am also using the white Premium chin strap that I get from Lincare, which works much better for me than the black one with the thin straps. I just can't seem to get the black one tight enough.

​So, if you're having trouble, don't panic like I did. Go back to your sleep doctor and make sure they look at all the relevant data. There are so many moving factors that affect these things; it's exactly like a golf swing. That is exactly what it's like, and that is precisely how frustrating it can be to get your sleep apnea therapy working the way you want it to. For those of you who play golf you fix one thing and then another problem pops up over and over and over again. What works this week might not work next week. I went shot in 81 on a golf course and the following week I went out to actually a simpler course and I was hitting behind the ball for some reason I couldn't stop it and I must have scored 181.

​I still remember when I got that Sullivan BiPAP in 2003—my life changed completely, even with those standard, un-titrated guesstimate settings of 12 and 8 when the sleep study failed. After I got that machine, I stopped yawning constantly, and I never got super tired when driving or fell asleep during Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, or anything else in a theater.