Newbie with SpO2 report

Hi, my name is Kayla . I am 41 years old and have not been diagnosed with sleep apnea. I have been struggeling with severe daytime tiredness and I frequently wake up during the night. I am a very loud snorer ( I have recorded myself). A friend of mine has sleep apnea and told me, that my problems sound like I could have sleep apnea. I bough a used pulsoximeter and recorded last night. Could anyone help me interpret the report? Does it look like I could have a problem? Thank you so much for your help.

Kayla

In terms of oxygen level drops it doesn't appear that you have a problem. What drops you do have could be just normal sleep lower oxygen levels. It's normal for O2 levels to drop when we are asleep...sometimes 3 to 4% and no big deal.
Your one rather dramatic drop shown...probably loss of contact with the pulse ox. Real desats take longer to go down and back up again.

That said...not everyone who has sleep apnea will experience marked dramatic or bad desats so relying on just a pulse oximeter report to establish a diagnosis one way or the other isn't always a definitive answer.
It's one of those situations where a negative/normal pulse ox report doesn't mean no sleep apnea. I have a friend who has severe sleep apnea with 60 plus AHI whose oxygen levels never really dropped at all. She had a sleep study done in a lab and I saw the report....oxygen levels never dropped below 94% from her baseline of 97%.

In other words...just because this pulse ox report isn't definitively showing desats and thus highly suspicious for apnea...doesn't mean you don't have it. You need to do some further investigating to make sure one way or the other.

Thank you for the great explanation Pugsy

Your friend gave you good advice! It would be well worth your while to get a sleep test, given what you are reporting. For what it's worth, I was diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea but never had any desats below 90 that night, with most O2 levels above 94.

kayla wrote: ↑

Mon May 25, 2020 2:15 am

I have been struggeling with severe daytime tiredness and I frequently wake up during the night. I am a very loud snorer

That's three symptoms of sleep apnea. Get tested. If the labs are not open, you can get a home sleep study.

I want to thank you all for your replies and great advice.
Today I made an appointment for a in home sleep study on August 3rd.