Newby questions....little problem with OSCAR details

Hi new user here. I had a sleep test done at home and was diagnosed with moderate apnea. I have a new Aircurve 10 machine and pillow mask. First few nights were flawless and got 98-100 on the resmed app. Interesting enough the last couple nights only getting a 38-40 on the app and 45 events per hour. Still havent figured out the cause as the mask seal was good. However my question is how to raise the flow pressure on startup. I feel like im struggling a bit for air after putting on the mask. I have the mask on lightly. my current machine settings are Mode Vauto, max ipap 20, min epap 5, PS 4, tj max 2.0s, tj min .3s. Which setting is exactly the startup up pressure? The ramp mode is turned off.

Welcome to the forum.

Go here and request the provider/clinical manual for your machine. From what you say it is likely the ResMed AirCurve 10 VAuto. You request it via email and they send it to you as an email attachment.
https://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap- ... tup-manual

Get OSCAR software so we can see exactly what is going on with your therapy.
OSCAR https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph ... stallation
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph ... rpretation

Post a detailed daily report that shows the high AHI night. Let's see what is going on.
Don't need or want all those graphs...read this for examples of graph formatting.
viewtopic/t158560/How-to-post-images-for-review.html

Don't go changing the pressures without some member input....sometimes more pressure isn't the way to go because sometimes the kind of event that makes up that high AHI won't respond to more pressure but instead the more pressure might actually make things worse.

Thank you for the reply. i am not super computer savvy but did download Oscar and read the SD card from my machine. The results displayed with the summary on the left side and all the daily charts on the right side in very small script and graphs taking up most of the page but unreadable size. Not sure how to make my screen look like what every one posts on here for you to read.

For starters....how about just telling me what the AHI breakdown into each category shows on the left side. Can you read that?
How much is each index composing the total AHI?
Each category....CA/Central index? OA (obstructive apnea) index? and Hyponea Index?

I have no idea what the problem is with your overall resolution and the tiny text but go here and start troubleshooting.
It may have something to do with your computer OS.
Scroll down a bit to where it says "OSCAR graphics problems"
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph ... leshooting

This is what i have managed to get on my screenshot. Obviously it shows a large leak which i have no idea why because it seems to be fine.

Okay...now we are getting somewhere.

We don't want or need all those graphs because they are so teeny tiny we can't really evaluate anything.
You can resize the needed graphs by hovering your mouse over the bottom line in the graph until you see a little plus sign and click and drag to resize.

You leave the stuff on the left side alone and resize the graphs on the right side so that only these graphs show.

Events
Flow Rate
Pressure (not mask pressure graph)
Leak
Flow limitations
We don't need the snore graph because from the statistics number it's not going to be all that exciting.

Your actual settings are
Minimum EPAP 7.2
PS 4
and the max IPAP is 20 which it looks like you are hitting the max for a substantial amount of time...recommend increasing the max to 25 for starters.

I don't know where you get the EPAP at 5.0 from unless the ramp was on or something.
I can't see the graphs themselves at all to evaluate because so tiny.
So scratching my head on that one.

While you work on a better presentation of the graphs....we can tell from the left side statistics that you need more minimum EPAP. How much more we don't know yet. The machine is essentially trying to set a new minimum it appears on its own. This happens quite often and depending on how quickly it sets the new minimum and keeps it sort of dictates just how aggressive I might want to increase that minimum. I can't comment on that until I see more clear pressure graphs.

How did you come to be using these settings? Did you have a sleep study done in a sleep lab with cpap so they could try to come up with optimal pressures? Or did they just make a wild guess at pressures?

The clinical manual explains how to get into the secret menu where you can change things.
For sure change the max IPAP to 25.
And change minimum EPAP to 10 if you are comfortable with that change...if not try 8.2 and go with smaller increases.
Leave PS alone for now...and leave the other comfort settings alone as well.

What position do you normally sleep in?

Don't worry so much about leaks right now. Doesn't surprise me because what seals well at the 7 EPAP....isn't going to work so great when it goes to 16 EPAP. There is a mask fit feature on your machine...explained in the manual. Use it for the beginning of the night when fitting your mask.

Eventually you should get a detailed report that looks like this one below. May take a bit of fiddling but I think you can see where it's much easier to evaluate.
This is mine...I use the same machine as you do.

I took a screenshot of the overview which i think shows how well it was doing on the first three days

What do you think may have changed from the first 3 nights and now?
Something changed....
Sleeping position maybe?
Amount of sleep maybe?
Medication change?

Something changed but we have no way to know what it was from the data shown on the software reports.

I managed to resize the graphs. I will make the setting changes you advised.

There's still something weird going on with the fonts/text stuff.
Beyond my skill level to fix which is why I added "little problem with OSCAR" to your topic/subject line to get the attention of the people who are skilled in troubleshooting OSCAR problems.....my way of getting their attention and asking for help.

I slept pretty well last night and no issues with the mask. i thought my numbers would be down but not as much as i hoped.

I set the EPAP at 8.4 and seemed fine. Do you think keep raising it in increments to 10?

Italiano67 wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 31, 2022 8:34 am

I set the EPAP at 8.4 and seemed fine. Do you think keep raising it in increments to 10?

Yep. As you can tolerate.
I know it was just one night at the higher EPAP minimum but the AHI reduction was roughly a third and mainly one big cluster at that. Maybe REM and supine combination or something.

I still wish your graphs showed up like they are supposed to but I don't know how to fix it.

Happy Lunar New Year.

The problem OP is having with the Graph Titles can be corrected at

File - Preferences - Appearance - Fonts - Graph Titles - Size

Mine is set at 13 / Bold.

BTW: An easy way to set the OSCAR graphs in the preferred order and format:

1. Go to View menu - Reset Graphs - Standard

2. Make sure Daily Sidebar is on. Toggled by F8 key. Or checkmarking it in the View menu.

3. Turn off Daily Calendar and Pie Chart. Toggled by F9 and F3, or remove check in View menu

4. Set Graph Height in File Menu -> Preferences -> Appearance Tab

On my setup, when set to 80, I get really squished up graphs.

At 192, the 5 graphs (flags, flow rate, pressure, leak, flow limit) are nicely spaced out.

At 160 I also get snores as the bottom graph.

Edit: updated formatting process

Thanks Grumpy i made the changes and its a little better