How to properly set VAuto clinician settings?

Hello,

I am inputting the IPAP/EPAP/PS, etc settings on my new VAuto (sourced by GrayGhost4, thank you again sir!), and I am not sure what my settings should be set to. The original prescription from last year's sleep study called for EPAP of 10 and IPAP of 15, and nothing else on the prescription. (I will be getting another copy of my sleep study tomorrow to help ascertain what my settings should be, AHI, and all that).

So far I have the settings as:

Mode - VAuto
Max IPAP - 15
Min EPAP - 10
PS 4.0
Ti Max - 2.5 s
Ti Min - 1.0 s
Trigger - Med
Cycle - Med
Mask - Full Face

This is my first time using an auto bipap. Should I set the Max IPAP and Min EPAP to different (higher IPAP/lower EPAP) values to allow the bipap to increase or decrease within a larger threshold as needed (I'm assuming from what I've read that the device will monitor my apneas and adjust settings to reduce apneas). What is PS and what should it be at? I will adjust Ti Max and min on the fly, and what are trigger and cycle?

Finally, I know this isn't the place for medical diagnoses or advice in place of a doctor, but I have Kaiser insurance and they're pretty much leaving me to fend for myself in terms of treating my sleep apnea, even with what I thought was a good plan (Platinum from ACA). I have tried setting an appointment with a sleep doctor or therapist the last few days with no updates or calls back. Besides I'd like to educate myself on how to properly monitor my own therapy.

Thanks, Jio

PS is Pressure Support...or fancy term for the difference between inhale and exhale.

With your current settings of
EPAP min of 10
Max IPAP of 15
and PS of 4

when you first start the machine you will experience 10 Exhale (EPAP) plus 4 PS or 14 Inhale (IPAP)
and if the machine wants to go to 15...it will drag EPAP up to 11. IPAP and EPAP can dance around but always with that 4 cm PS difference.
What you have set is a really tight range and hurts nothing to try it and see what the machine wants to do and how you feel.
PS is fixed on ResMed bilevel machines like you have.

I would suggest that you leave the Ti Max and Ti Min and Trigger, etc all to the default settings to start with. They work well for most people and you can tweak them later once you understand what they do and decide if you want to play with them. The settings you posted look like the default settings to me.

Do you have the manual for your machine...the provider manual...it explains those other settings a bit.
You can request it here if you don't have it. Just make sure to request the manual for your model machine.
http://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap-p ... tup-manual

Hello Pugsy,

Thank you for that information, I do have one, I'm not sure why I didn't look in there to begin with.

This might be a stupid question since the book probably covers it then, but how will I know if my pressures ever need to be adjusted in the future? I downloaded SleepyHead program, and I might use ResScan also, but aside from meeting with the Doc to analyze data and make changes, is there anyway I can know for myself if settings need to be increased/decreased?

Thanks again.

The reason I am so interested is because my experience with my previous doctor was very unhelpful for a lot of the questions I had, and therapy was hard to adjust to as a result. I relied on that doctor for adjustments and everything, and essentially usually left my visits with her with more questions than answers, which led to me having difficulty adjusting to life with a mask on every night.

I really want to use this therapy effectively, and understand everything about it.. I am tired of being tired.

Once you get familiar with what you see on the software reports there's no reason that you can't come up with educated ideas as to what adjustments you may or may not need.
We can help you with any questions you may have.
Sometimes it's real obvious that a change needs to be made and sometimes maybe there's no urgent need to alter something but maybe someone wants to just play with a few little tweaks.

It's not really all that difficult but it does take a bit of time coming to grips with what a person sees on the reports and does it or doesn't it need anything done about it and if it does..what to do.

We gotta start somewhere and might as well start with the existing settings and see what happens. Heck, they might be just perfect.

One word of caution though...if you decide to go playing around with PS...don't go over 6 cm PS...that can sometimes cause some hyperventilation issues which could trigger central apneas.
4 to 5 cm PS is the most commonly used PS setting on bilevel devices like yours.

Jioaa1988 wrote:Hello,

I am inputting the IPAP/EPAP/PS, etc settings on my new VAuto (sourced by GrayGhost4, thank you again sir!), and I am not sure what my settings should be set to. The original prescription from last year's sleep study called for EPAP of 10 and IPAP of 15,

appropriate settings would be:
epap min: 10
PS 5
ipap max: 20-25.