Waking up due to sudden pressure increase?

Any one else have this problem sometimes? This has happened to me the past two days. I'm not sure why because my nose felt fine. I would imagine it should only increase if my sinuses were congested but they weren't. I have a resmed autoset + nasal mask. The range I currently have set is between 7 - 15. My average is around 12. But sometimes it'll shoot up close to 14+ and it wakes me up. Is my machine acting up or something?

The pressure is designed to rise incrementally at signs of impending problems. Not sure how quick "sudden" is, or if you happen to wake at the point of a step up in pressure. I am not familiar with your history, but if there is no issue with centrals, maybe a higher starting pressure would make the machine not have to work so hard to reach a therapeutic pressure. No way to know if this applies to you or not, but some people whose machines were climbing pretty high have found when they increase their starting pressure the machine never needs to go as high. It's the old "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" thing. I would ease that 7 up a bit at a time, watching for any signs in your data that the changes are having an adverse effect. About the congestion - nasal congestion is one piece of the puzzle. But laxity in throat tissues when asleep (including tongue) can occur whether congested or not. Preventing their encroaching collapse is the key to the pressure not needing to climb.

I agree with KT. If you are averaging 12, a move to 14 shouldn't be dramatic. Increasing the minimum may help.

gravyv wrote:The range I currently have set is between 7 - 15. My average is around 12. But sometimes it'll shoot up close to 14+ and it wakes me up.

Look at your pressure line in Sleepyhead. I'll make a SWAG that it is spending very little time below 10. If that is the case, then I would raise the minimum pressure to 10 (or whatever pressure point seems to be the "floor"). This will reduce the increases in pressure you are experiencing.

As for the maximum setting, I always set mine at 20. The machine will not raise the pressure any higher than needed.

BTW, that machine does not make "sudden" pressure increases. Any pressure increases happen gradually over several minutes.

The person who said that the machine does no increase the pressure suddenly should have added ". . . assuming the machine is working correctly." While I doubt it's a mechanical malfunction, I would not rule that out entirely.

As one reply already suggested, you may be awakening due to the same underlying event that is causing the machine to bump up pressure, rather than because of the pressure itself.