Red Unhappy Frown Face/Leaks and AHI

I had a question, if anyone can please answer regarding the Red Frown face on the LED on the machine. I know that I was leaking air last night through the Airfit P10 (one nostril I think, and don't know why) and I got the Red Frown Face with a leak rate of 22, but my AHI was 0.4 How could the leak rate not be great and the AHI be 0.4? Also what would cause a leak in a very good fitting Airfit P10 nasal pillow? Also, I am not sure if this has to do with leaks, but my mouth is taped fully shut but my mouth is as dry as a desert and it feels glued. Is the mask old, is the air leaking out of my mouth, even though it is taped shut? No chipmunk cheeks. Thank you so much for any advice.

The frowny face means your leaks were above 24 for more than 30% of the night. This is a problem and you need to get a handle on the leaks. The results from a night with a frowny face are suspect - the machine doesn't do as good a job detecting events when you have large leaks. There are board members who are very good at dealing with leaks - I've been lucky and haven't had a problem since going with a chinstrap, so can't help you much.

Thank you Nick Danger. But my mouth was taped totally shut and I mean sealed totally with tape. So does that mean the leak is coming from the nasal pillow?

If your mouth was taped and you are sure it wasn't coming from there, the only other possibilities are the pillows or the hose. Usually when my pillows leak, it wakes me and I reposition them and go right back to sleep. Could the mask be old and leaking around the joints? Maybe turn the machine on and plug the pillows with your finger and see if there is a leak at any of the connections? If the pillows are old, then they might collapse instead of springing back into shape. You can get replacement pillows for a song on Ebay - if you use size small, then I think several of us have extra size small pillows we could send you. Mediums and larges are in high demand, though.

Thanks Nick Danger: I use a Medium (high demand) I do have other ones, I will try, so most likely leak at the nasal pillows level?

Eventually, the silicon gets less springy the more you use it. I've been using a size medium for 4 or 5 months with no problem - my first one lasted about 6 months before I replaced it. Some people replace them more often than that.

By the way - one way that some people use to make their masks recover their original springiness is to boil them. DO NOT do this with the P10, a portion of the pillows is made of low melting point plastic and not silicone. Someone tried this with a P10 and ended up with a gooey mess.

You need to use the software and actually look at the leak graph to see exactly how bad it was.
We know that for at least 30% of the night it was above 24 L/min but we don't know how far above 24 L/min it went to. Was it mainly at 26 L/min which really isn't all that bad and the machine can still do a good job reporting and responding to what it senses or was it well over 30 L/min for a prolonged period of time and if it was then it's possible the AHI isn't accurate because the machine was clueless as to what was going on or wasn't going on.

The machine still does a decent and accurate job up to around 30 L/min leak...above that and things start getting a bit iffy and above 35 L/min it pretty much doesn't have much of a clue what is or isn't going on.
So...you need to use the software for sure if you are to have any idea of how accurate that AHI reading is.

Nick Danger: THANK YOU regarding the boiling I was going to do that tonight actually after reading another post about boiling nasal pillows to get them back into shape. Thank you very much.

Pugsy thank you: I work at a hospital with a sleep clinic right below me. Although I don't use their services, I am sure that they will download my data card and let me know what is going on. I have had the unhappy frown a few times. I had turned the dial to "nasal mask" when I thought I would try the WISP mask again. I didn't like the WISP and I changed it back to "nasal pillows" but found a couple weeks ago somehow it went back to "nasal mask" when I got the unhappy frown. I hope it didn't do that again automatically, as I switched it to "nasal pillows."

Luthie2006 wrote: I got the Red Frown Face with a leak rate of 22, but my AHI was 0.4 How could the leak rate not be great and the AHI be 0.4?

When the leak rate is high, the machine can have a difficult time tracking your breathing pattern. And when it can't track the breathing pattern, it can miss some events, which makes the reported AHI lower than it really was.

Also what would cause a leak in a very good fitting Airfit P10 nasal pillow? Also, I am not sure if this has to do with leaks, but my mouth is taped fully shut but my mouth is as dry as a desert and it feels glued. Is the mask old, is the air leaking out of my mouth, even though it is taped shut? No chipmunk cheeks. Thank you so much for any advice.

If the mask got knocked around, one or both of the nasal pillows may have come off your nostrils. And it's possible that might have triggered the large leaks.

Or if one or both of the inner cones in the P10 collapsed that can cause the seal around the nostril to fail. Which can lead to large leaks.

Or the pillows weren't attached to the mask frame correctly. Or the connector between the P10's small hose and the large hose wasn't firmly pushed into both hoses. Or there's a small tear or hole in one of the hoses. But all of these things would tend to lead to a uniformly higher than expected leak. As in a larger than expected leak that lasts all night.

Or air is leaking out of your mouth even though it's taped. What kind of tape are you using? And how are you actually doing the taping? How many pieces of tape? Where do you put the tape?

Or the leaks are a combination of more than one of the above things.

With the P10, one thing to check is the inside silicone sleeve. Both pillows have a inside and outside sleeve. Sometimes the inside gets flipped backward. This makes the outside one flimsy and leak. If this is the case just go inside and push it back with your finger.

Thank you OkyDoky:

Since I have a spare Airfit P10 (medium) in my drawer, I will try that one. Also, a couple weeks ago I was "playing around" with the settings when I thought that I would retry my WISP nasal mask and I changed the setting to "nasal mask" from "nasal pillows." Well the WISP mask for me was short-lived. I tried it for a few minutes and didn't like it and changed my setting back to "nasal pillows." That night (with nasal pillows) I woke up and saw the red frowny face and looked at the settings and somehow it changed itself BACK to the nasal mask setting and not nasal pillows. I was in a rush to get to work this morning and didn't have time to check the setting to see if it switched itself back to nasal mask from pillows. (This will be a whole other question if this happened again).
I then set back the setting to nasal pillows. So I will look tonight to see if it got switched back again.

Robysue: One piece of tape going vertically down my lips and it is as tight as can be. No air coming out of my mouth.