CPAP and no sleep apnea?

SleepingUgly wrote:Well, hopefully Undestructed will come back and tell us which interpretation is correct. My guess is that he/she had a sleep study, then a titration in the lab, then had problems with CPAP at home, so he/she was brought back into the lab for another study, then two more, for a grand total of 3 negative sleep studies.

Agreed except that I would add that it appears that Undestructed no longer has a machine for whatever reason.

LoQ wrote:Agreed except that I would add that it appears that Undestructed no longer has a machine for whatever reason.

Maybe he/she didn't meet criteria for compliance? Hopefully he/she won't keep us in suspense much longer.

Sorry about that, I didn't expect this thread to be so popular

For a recap: I have had printouts for all my sleep studies. Only ONE of them shows anything high in regards to OSA (and interestingly enough I tried calling the doctor who had given me my first study--it appears that he has stopped his practice). As far as tweaking things, I tweaked nearly everything I possibly could at first--I changed my mask, I changed my air pressure (er by myself...), I changed different humidity levels, changed my position, my tubing, how the mask was worn, I even put damned duct tape on my face so that I wouldn't have the strong urge to rip the mask off. I've tried a lot.

I had to switch insurance which is why I no longer have my old machine. My doctor wants me to continue Nuvigil for awhile, but this is day one off of the GHB and here I am, not tired at nearly 2 AM. I insisted before trying any more medication that I wanted some kind of breathing device--they rented me an APAP for a weekend. Same result, I ended up ripping the mask off because I couldn't take the pressure and the APAP activates when you need it. The doctor checked the report and it settled on 7 cm/H2O, which is exactly what my first machine was set to.

After that weekend I returned the APAP. I'm done with breathing machines, they are not helping. For now I'm just going to stick with GHB, change my diet, increase my exercise and see what other avenues I can pursue to get sleep that isn't drug-induced. What do you all think?

phoebe368 wrote:I had a similar experience. I had a total of 3 sleep studies - the first 2 done at accredited sleep disorders clinic in So. California showed nothing. A doctor recommended I get it done at Stanford Sleep Disorders clinic which is considered one of the best in the world. I was finally diagnosed up there with OSA. Their scoring criteria for respiratory events is more conservative and they have very sensitive testing equipment

This is something that baffles me--shouldn't scoring critera for a sleeping ailment such as OSA be a STANDARD for ALL testing centers? Why does it differ? Not that I'm asking you of course, I'm just confused why this is.

And for another post...

Let me give you the specifics of what I did:

Got a job with insurance. Felt pretty tired, so did a sleep study. I woke up feeling as if I had slept well. I came back to the doctor. "You have sleep apnea and fragmented sleeping patterns." Shit. Had another study with CPAP and four hours of sleep. Woke up ready to run a marathon. Through insurance, I got a CPAP. Was laid off and I moved, keeping my machine--bad idea as they started billing me for the machine, so I returned it. Went to another doctor, had another sleep study, didn't qualify for OSA. I was baffled, so I went to a third, who was almost positive I had OSA as well (without testing me at first). The sleep study showed negative on OSA, but still a highly fragmented sleep pattern (and THAT sleep study I was on Lunesta for one night). The doc wanted to test for narcolepsy, so we had to do another study with an MSLT (multiple sleep latency test). I tested negative for Narcolepsy, RLS, OSA, I did have some upper airway resistance but I'm using nasal rinse and steroid spray for that, and that's all I can recall.

BTW, the pulse-ox readout on the previous tests (besides the first one) reported back an oxygen saturation of at LEAST 93% so it shows I'm breathing.

Let me transcribe the three readouts I have:

Impressions/conclusions/whatever:

First test: The results indicate sleep apnea with an overall AHI of 15.5 The lowest SaO2 recorded was 89%. The baseline sleep pattern or architecture is adversely affected by the sleep related respiratory events. This assoicated fragmented sleep effort may be the underlying cause for the significant hypersomnia symptoms the patient is displaying.

(there was another test after this with CPAP, but I have no printout on it)

Second test: Mild non-positional OSA/hypopnea AHI=4.6/hr desaturation to 94%. Poor sleep efficiency noted at 41.9%. Possibly secondary to "First night effect." The patient had extreme difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep during the study.

Third: The baseline PSG did not clearly demonstrate OSA. Occasional RERAs were observed. Upper airway resistance syndrome cannot be ruled out. Frequent spontaneous arousals, tachypnea (18 to 24 bpm) and sleep fragmentation was observed, pronounced in REM.

(Another test with an MSLT was done after this, but I have yet to get the handout (my fault)).

Something to note: I've got a lot of stomach problems--my last diagnosis was gastric stasis. Once I'm on GHB again I'm going to talk to a gastro-doc to see what my deal is there. As you can see, I've done lots of studying and I'm actually getting pretty sick of it. My last diagnosis (as before) was IDIOCRATIC HYPERSOMNIA. That's not good enough for me. There's a reason I'm not sleeping and I'm going to find it.

One more post...

that would be IDIOPATHIC hypersomnia.