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secret agent girl wrote:
Where do I find the average oxygen level for a night? I've looked through the program I have (for the CMS-50F) and I don't see it anywhere...

When you "print" your report, choose the Oximetry Report. It has all the events etc in one page.

In my opinion we make too much fuss about the value of finger tip oximetry while CPAPing.

http://www.amperordirect.com/pc/help-pu ... tions.html

If some one is diagnosed with a severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, asthma, hypercapnia, etc) then much more accurate gas analysers are used to check arterial blood gases. But still, studies with CPAPs on such patients did show some decrease in inspiratory efforts and dyspnoea while improving the pattern of breathing. But in most cases treatment with mechanical ventilators was preferred.

Secret Agent Girl, The Basel SpO2 reported by the software is close enough to the average that you can simply use that value.

"Too much fuss..."

Blood gas analysis can be very accurate, but it also has limitations.

Pulse oximetery is non invasive and dynamic.

Blood gas analysis is invasive and static.

If the sleep labs think enough of pulse oximetery to consider it a valuable part of their scoring, I think a little "fuss" about it is worthwhile. In fact, the major concern with OSA is oxygen desaturation and the pulse oximeter is a better tool to evaluate that then blood gas analysis.

With that said, I put more faith in my cardiologist reviewed pulse oximetery reports than I do the machine scored AHI report, but if you use both together you get a little clearer view of what is going on during sleep.