newbie looking for help and advice

roztom · Post by **roztom** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:12 pm

Brent that is true. In many cases it's a,

"What came first the APnea or the Pressure?"

WHat I see in my graphs is the machine seems to respond by raising the pressure but when the pressure raises there are more Apneas.

Is it eliminating more Apneas by raising the pressure or is the raising pressure causing more Apneas?

Is the key to locate a pressure where there are mniimal Apneas/Hypop's?

That seems to be a higher pressure based on my charts. At lower pressure where I start out I get a lot of Hpop's. As the pressure goes up the Hypop's drop. Every night though I start out at low pressure, 6 cm and I have events.

Thisleads me to believe that the machine is not necessarily pre-emptive instead I need to view the data and find a close pressure fit where events are a minimum.

This essentially would take me very close to a CPAP function vs an APAP.

Best,

Tom

NightHawkeye · Post by **NightHawkeye** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:27 pm

[EDIT: . . . The following is the response to your earlier question, Tom.]

That's close to my take on it, Tom. I believe if I were to use CPAP, then a constant pressure of 10 cm, plus or minus a little, would effectively eliminate nearly all of my apneas. However, I do much better on APAP letting the machine keep a low pressure for most of the night. I have some residual events, but not enough to cause oxygen desaturations. The only time I seem to have desats is when the mouth pops open, but for some reason, with the Swift even those desats are very mild. (Don't ask me to explain it, but there was an abrupt shift in desat intensity that occurred when I started using the Swift interface.)

Regards,
Bill

NightHawkeye · Post by **NightHawkeye** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:38 pm

Brent Hutto wrote:Unless the plot can capture some details of the temporal sequencing of pressure and apnea events, then you can't puzzle out causality.

I effectively do have "a priori" knowledge, Brent, because I spent many nights recording my apneas at 4 cm pressure, and the APAP pressure increases repeat the same sort of patterns as the apnea clusters observed at the lower pressures.

Regards,
Bill

roztom · Post by **roztom** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:50 pm

BIll:

I am doing the APAP for a similar reason, to be able to be on a lower pressure for most of the time for more comfort and less leakage.

However, at the low pressures I see more events. What is interesting I even have more events at my titrated pressure. It seems I mayt need an even higher pressure to get the numbers down but then the comfort issue comes up.

Court is out on this until I collect more data. I may just end up bracketing a higher number.

Best,

Tom

coolhandluke · Post by **coolhandluke** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:35 pm

I got my respironics bipap auto with biflex machine today (off ebay, new in box, $850) (Ebay axed the auction after it had already ended and I had paid by paypal for the machine) ! and my mask from this site came today too! I've read both the user and provider manuals, and this thing seems pretty self-adjusting. It's set on a max IAP of 20, and a 4 min EAP. Screw the ramp, if it's uncomfortable I'll try it later. Is there anything I'm missing that I need to do or set or anything? I can't wait to go to bed and possibly get a good night's sleep for the first time in years.

Thanks guys!
Luke

Moogy · Post by **Moogy** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:18 pm

Congrats! That is my machine, too, and I do love it. I advise using the ramp if you are new. It helped me a lot. I tried to go without it for a couple of nights, and then I turned it on. If you have the manuals, you probably know how to set it. Let me know if you need any help figuring anything out.

I really would like to see the provider manual. Any chance I can get a copy of yours? How many pages is it?

Moogy

P.S. I was eager to try mine on the first day, so I took a little nap with it in the afternoon. I was so sleep deprived that it didn't seem to affect my night-time sleep at all. You deserve it--go take a little nap!

NightHawkeye · Post by **NightHawkeye** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:30 pm

rooster wrote:NightHawkeye: What were the things you tweaked?

Here's the short list:
machine (twice)
mask (twice)
hose (once)

Hmm . . ., did I leave anything out? Nope. Now that I look at it, that's not tweaking at all; it's wholesale replacement - of everything. Oops, not quite everything; I did keep the card reader. I haven't felt the need to change anything about the oximeter though.

And then there are the ancillary items:
dental device
chinstrap

Also, I've run the pressure up and down. Tried the following modes: BiPAP, Auto-BiPAP, CPAP, APAP; all with and without C-Flex.

Yep, I'm definitely slow.

Regards,
Bill

newbie looking for help and advice

"Use the RAMP, Luke....."