Tec5 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:35 am
. . . or insist on a consult with my doctor to discuss this?. . .
Depends. A message to doc's staff might be in order if you have concerns.
My doc knows not to suggest I suspend for any amount of time. I am very severe. I consider my life very dear to me. But that's just me. And I'm not you. There is no need for me to have a diagnostic study, since simple OSA is the full diagnosis and PAP is the "cure." I will always use PAP, so testing me without it would be a worthless exercise in futility for everyone involved.
That said, for YOU, it all depends on your history, overall health, feeling about risks (all tests have risks, even if just a paper cut that could get infected
), and what the trade-off is for risk/benefit in relation to the purpose of the retest. Therefore, I would consider your negotiations with your doc based on his expertise and knowledge vs. your understanding of what information is needed all to come into play. Maybe no right or wrong answer, as long as your entire team is on the same page about it. It is a nebulous area for the very mild AHI, if that is your situation.
For the record, a negative finding in a HOME test is NOT scientifically considered valid proof that a patient will not benefit from PAP. That is why negative findings or inconclusive findings in a HOME test must be followed up with a lab/center-based NPSG. Only positive findings in a HOME test are considered meaningful as a consensus in the industry.
My personal mind set isn't diagnosis-based when it comes to PAP in general. I feel that there are two kinds of humans on this planet: (1) those who can benefit from PAP and (2) those who can't. I am very simplistic on that. So "proving" that a human would not have benefitted from PAP on one particular night does NOT mean that much to me in my patient-based pragmatic approach to it. I think of PAP as something slightly outside the medical model of testing that has been force-fitted into present medical approaches in order to get the full benefit of the medical profession's involvement in order to spread the word and get the simple mechanical pressurized-air treatment to as many in the public as possible who can benefit.
So how your doc's approach and lab's approach fits into your way of thinking is something I'm willing to comment on with more information, but without knowing your full circumstances and your way of thinking, my words don't mean much. I leave it up to you to decide how much more you are willing to share and how much comment you welcome.
Most of all, I would listen to Pugsy carefully. She may not always bat 1000, but there is no other person I'd rather see at the plate when the game is close.
-Jeff
