xpap and asthma. Anyone?

I'm just curious, since asthma affects how well you move air out of the lungs, does/can xpap affect this? Is it harder to breathe against the pressure during an asthma flare? Is there anytime you can't use it?

SingleMom wrote:I'm just curious, since asthma affects how well you move air out of the lungs, does/can xpap affect this? Is it harder to breathe against the pressure during an asthma flare? Is there anytime you can't use it?

I have asthma and OSA. Asthma does not prevent me from using my APAP. I treat my asthma "as usual" and think it's more important to use the machine w/asthma. When having an asthma excerbation, there is two insults to proper breathing...asthma and OSA.... When I had the flu and asthma excerbation recently, I watched my pulse ox for desats closely, set an alarm to get up and checked my peak flows and did treatments during the night, just as I did before APAP. I think it's unwise to not use xPAP during an asthma flare as both OSA and Asthma are a threat against breathing. What I did learn when using the pulse ox, at times I had asthma flares I slept through, one soon after getting up, nebulizing then going back to sleep, within minutes I had a period of destats without any corresponding apnea events. I don't think it's any harder to breathe with the xPAP with asthma than without asthma. How well you are tolerating your CPAP pressure before asthma and how much anxiety you have during an asthma flare may indicate how your pressure feels when having an asthma flare. It's best to treat both asthma and OSA. JMHO.

elg5cats

The only issue that I found with using my machine and my asthma... is that there are some forms of FLEX that I can't use... that make me feel as if I'm wheezing.

Thank you for your replies. The sleep Dr said a concern could be with a BiPAP or non-invasive vent with timed breathes. I'm going to research this a little more.