Retesting for sleep apnea

Over a year ago I did a “take home test” with a small machine and the thing for my finger etc...

The entire experience was unsatisfactory.
It was so poorly handled by the company that I have always questioned its accuracy and wondered if I do in fact even have sleep apnea at all.

Fast forward a year with CPAP and I still feel tired all day every day which supports my theory that I may not even have sleep apnea at all.

I’d like to test again more on my terms. Can anyone confirm/deny that the take home test is basically the same thing every EMT carries. And if I have a friend who is an EMT that I can just use his machine? Is there any difference in the “official” take home apnea test vs. the blood/oxygen level testers the EMT’s carry?

Has anyone ever outright purchased a take home test machine?? I can’t imagine they would be more than $1000 which is about how much it would cost me to do 2 take home tests. If I purchase my own test machine will I need additional equipment to interpret the results?

What results are shown on your CPAP machine? Average AHI? Pressiure setting? How about downloading some Sleepyhead charts. Generally the take home tests are pretty accurate. They measure more than blood oxygen levels. Still being tired every day could mean the settings on your machine are not optimal.

Sluggish wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:28 pm

Over a year ago I did a “take home test” with a small machine and the thing for my finger etc...

The entire experience was unsatisfactory.
It was so poorly handled by the company that I have always questioned its accuracy and wondered if I do in fact even have sleep apnea at all.

Fast forward a year with CPAP and I still feel tired all day every day which supports my theory that I may not even have sleep apnea at all.

I’d like to test again more on my terms. Can anyone confirm/deny that the take home test is basically the same thing every EMT carries. And if I have a friend who is an EMT that I can just use his machine? Is there any difference in the “official” take home apnea test vs. the blood/oxygen level testers the EMT’s carry?

Has anyone ever outright purchased a take home test machine?? I can’t imagine they would be more than $1000 which is about how much it would cost me to do 2 take home tests. If I purchase my own test machine will I need additional equipment to interpret the results?

WTF???

You're getting a "sleep study" EVERY NIGHT with your CPAP machine!!!
The answers to your issues as to why you're still tired are in your nightly data.......if you'd bother to download and look at it with Sleepyhead.
And, contrary to your thought that you may NOT have sleep apnea........your tiredness is proof that you DO still have it.........and your settings are probably not optimal (as LSAT stated)........or you're not getting enough sleep, or some other problem you aren't aware of.

How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
What is your leak rate? I see you're using a nasal mask.......are you having massive leaks out your mouth?
What are your pressure settings? A minimum setting that's too low is very problematic. It takes too long for the pressure to rise and then that can only happen if you have Flow Limitations and/or Snores. Your minimum needs to be set to where it eliminates almost all of your A/H events.

In summary........your APAP/CPAP IS your home testing machine and you're using it every night (or should be).


Den

.

Just check your cpap data.
It will CONFIRM therapy--and therefore apnea.
(smh)

Sluggish wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:28 pm

Over a year ago I did a “take home test” with a small machine and the thing for my finger etc...

The entire experience was unsatisfactory.
It was so poorly handled by the company that I have always questioned its accuracy and wondered if I do in fact even have sleep apnea at all.

Fast forward a year with CPAP and I still feel tired all day every day which supports my theory that I may not even have sleep apnea at all.

A simple look at the data from your machine would confirm, or destroy, your theory.

Sluggish wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:28 pm

I’d like to test again more on my terms. Can anyone confirm/deny that the take home test is basically the same thing every EMT carries. And if I have a friend who is an EMT that I can just use his machine?

EMTs tend to have a lot of 'machines', none of which would perform a sleep test.

What are you talking about?

Sluggish wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 24, 2019 12:28 pm

Has anyone ever outright purchased a take home test machine?? I can’t imagine they would be more than $1000 which is about how much it would cost me to do 2 take home tests. If I purchase my own test machine will I need additional equipment to interpret the results?

You can find them on ebay sometimes.. or perhaps dotmed.com ... good luck at finding a sub 1000$ one.

You can get a home test from Jason over at http://axgsleepdiagnostics.com/product/ ... nattended/

As LSAT noted, just because you are still tired does not rule out apnea. You could have apnea and it is not being treated effectively. You could have apnea but you also have some other medical issue in addition. Or you might not have apnea.

For a pulse oximeter to be of value for this purpose, it would need to be one capable of recording (and those are around and not super expensive -- although I doubt your EMT friend has one). The reason is simple: you will be asleep and unable to check what the readings are.

The problem is that this is only two (pulse and sats) of the several measures that a home sleep study needs to record. So, lets assume you can find the equipment for sale (perhaps possible), it is less than $1,000 (seems unlikely), includes all cables and attachment points, includes the software that will be needed to download and process the data into a report, that all works with your current tech config, folks here help you interpret the report, and the results are clear cut. You are still out way more than the cost of a home study.

Or, you could start by making sure that your current treatment is effective for almost no cost....

If your treatment is suboptimal (as shown in SH data), you can safely assume you have apnea. If your data shows no (or very few) apneas, you can't really make an assumption (as the lack of apneas could be from effective treatment).

I personally feel that resmed or these other company’s that do sleep study’s should just let the general public buy and use the real equipment and software that they send home through insurance. I imagine the resmed software the techs use to get the results are probably automatically done for them and it can’t be that hard to use or figure out. It’s probably just as easy to use as sleepyhead. But it’s all about the money in the end. The sleep apnea market is huge more now then ever before. The resmed apnea airlink my insurance sent me had big warnings of my credit card getting charged 2500 if the device wasn’t sent back to them in 3 days of use. I’m sure the device isn’t even worth what they threaten to charge.

I’m retesting with the home sleep study this week again with my oral device because the first one failed on numerous counts. If you don’t tape the oximeter and nasal tube on it could fall off, which it did for me.. then for some reason or another on the third night, the device just randomly turned off an hr into the recording no reason, even though I used the fresh batteries they gave me each night. Then, I sent the device back to the sleep lab and the girl calls me a week later and says sorry our technician accidentally used the wrong software to pull your data so we only got the first night instead of the 3 you paid for...I had to redo it all over again... then the next test the mouthpiece was falling lose out of my mouth, making the whole reason I’m testing for worthless on the second test. Here I go now on a third home sleep study in the last 2 months and I hope it all works this time. So, yeah a home sleep study can fail for many reasons because it’s unattended and you just hope the techs know what they are doing with the data because they are the experts on getting the report together. The way I see it is it’s a chance just like anything else in life. It takes one bad night that “could” potentially be wrong and you are labeled that forever. Unless of course you want to just keep paying for tests over and over again. Sure you can get and use a cpap and sleepyhead and analyze things which is great but you still ended up paying for the machine in the end. There should be a more transparent way for people without sleepyhead and cpap to run tests themselves but there’s not. Maybe in the future there will be. An in lab test over night is way more accurate I’m sure but it’s going to cost you a whole lot more then the home one.

ravenous28 wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 24, 2019 2:36 pm

I’m sure the device isn’t even worth what they threaten to charge.

Nothing "medical related" in the USA is worth what they charge.