Newbie Needs Help

Hi,

I am 38 year old, 5'7', 73 kgs (not overweight) male who has recently been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea (AHI 76.7).

During the diagnostic study, I had 260 Apneas (only 1 hypopnea). AHI was 76.7.
During the therapy study, I had 6 Apneas (no hypopnea). AHI was 1.8.

I was recommended BiPAP S/T Mode at the pressure of 18/12 cm.

I have been using a Philips Respironics BiPap AVAPs (with comfort gel full face mask as I am a mouth breather) for the last two days and looking at the results on SleepyHead.

A few questions -

1) I feel very claustrophobic with the mask. I have been able to use the machine only 2-3 hours in the night. Is this normal? How long will it take to get used to the mask and be able to sleep all night? Any advice?

2) My first two night data on Sleepy Head shows
AHI 6 to 8
Obstructive 1 to 2
Rest is all Hypopnea

Is this normal? Do I need to worry about Hypopnea about focus more on Obstructive?

Looking to valuable advice on this forum,

Welcome to the forum?

Couple of questions....where are you located? Did your diagnostic sleep study mention centrals at all, if so, how many?

Seeker_here wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 17, 2018 12:01 am

I was recommended BiPAP S/T Mode at the pressure of 18/12 cm.

Odd choice of machines for OSA...what is the back up rate if in S/T mode?
Can you tell me the model number of the machine? Should be on the bottom of the blower.
Are you using a humidifier?
Did you get the provider manual for the machine? If not...go request it here.
https://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap- ... tup-manual

Yes...we worry about hyponeas also. If they weren't troublemakers they would not be flagged or part of the AHI.
But for right now set them on the back burner for just a little bit until we figure some other stuff out. We will come back to them later.

So some more questions
So you have only been at this for 2 nights? Is that correct?
Can you tell me what seems to be happening and causing you problems so that you can only wear the mask for 2 or 3 hours?
Are you using the ramp feature on the machine?
Are you having trouble feeling like you are moving enough air while awake?
Are you actually falling asleep for a while and then waking up and just have to take the mask off? If so, why the wake up?
Are you in a panic and if so any idea why?

The comfort gel full face is a lot of mask to be wearing on the face even for someone without some claustrophobia issues going on.
There might be a better less obtrusive full face mask available...like the Respironics DreamWear Full face mask.
Take a look at it here and let me know what you think.
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/respir ... dgear.html

and yes, short hours the first few nights is actually quite common but we of course want to try to fix whatever is causing the short hours before it becomes a bad habit. To fix a problem we have to try to identify the problem first.
Hence all the nosy questions and probably more later once I think of them.

Oh...just thought of another...what does your leak rate show in your SleepyHead reports?
Might be helpful if we could see what you are seeing.
See this thread.
viewtopic/t158560/How-to-post-images-for-review.html