Breathing Not Detected

I'm new to CPAP and Sleepyhead. I've looked through the Sleepyhead help pages but did not find anything to explain my BND value.



I use a full-face mask with Resmed 60 APAP w/ AFlex & humidifier.

This is my second attempt with CPAP and my second night in a row. I was diagnosed with "severe sleep apnea" a year and a half ago, which is when I got the device, but I did not manage to sleep with the mask and found the pressure untenable. I have made other changes in my lifestyle and decided to try CPAP again. This time I have no real difficulty tolerating the mask or the pressure (?) and Sleepyhead states that my AHI is 5.19 which, while "not very good", isn't apparently the worst either, considering how severe my doctor at the time of diagnosis said my apnea was. Perhaps the two are unrelated.

At any rate, both mornings since starting to use the device I have woken up feeling pretty good. It's just hard to be sure whether this is due to actual benefit from the device or just self-suggestion.

My concern is with the "breathing not detected" value being -138%. This makes no sense to me. I keep thinking that if this large (negative?) percentage means the machine isn't detecting my breathing, then perhaps that skews the rest of the results. I only recall waking up once when there was a leak on my cheek due to my pillow pressing against the mask.

Also the fact that a year and a half ago I could not tolerate sleeping with the thing and now I am just a-ok with it makes me wonder if everything is kosher.

I am sure if I googled all the terminology I could understand these charts and numbers better, but this is all a lot to take in at once. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Here is another recent discussion on the subject. viewtopic/t114731/Breathing-not-detected.html
There they were discussing possible leak rates causing the reading. Your highest leak rate was 50 and with a Respironics machine that shouldn't interfere with it's reporting since the vent rates on your mask could be 40 to 50 L/min at your pressures and this is included in the Respironics total leak reporting. So that doesn't seem to be the cause.
With a negative number, I would say this is a bug in the software. There are a few known bugs in the latest software and it remains a work in progress. This looks like a new reported event in the latest software as I don't see it in my previous version of Sleepyhead. I think you can remain confident in the other reporting and graphs.

Note that "breathing not detected" doesn't mean "breathing not occurring."

D.H. wrote:Note that "breathing not detected" doesn't mean "breathing not occurring."

Otherwise you might have trouble waking up and reading the data.

chunkyfrog wrote:

D.H. wrote:Note that "breathing not detected" doesn't mean "breathing not occurring."

Otherwise you might have trouble waking up and reading the data.

In the old times they put a cold mirror over your mouth to see if it would fog, no fog bury them. Times used to be tough. Jim

Thank you for the replies, I guess I don't have to worry about it too much.