JoyD. wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 10:37 am
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I'm still trying to get better interpreting my Flow Rate breaths.
Below are two zoomed-in shots of breaths that I'd like feedback on please . . .
It would help us tremendously if you included the flow limitation graph as well as the flow rate graph.
1. The first are "smaller breaths with tails at the exhale" (first half of my zoomed shot). I OFTEN see these "sleep breaths", even for an extended period of time like up to 15 minutes. -- Contrast them with what I would call "NORMAL sleep breaths" seen at the very end of the shot (7:35am).
-- Do you see these in your Flow Rate? What do you think they are??
Here is your image:
The usual suspect for this kind of flow rate data is "expiratory mouth breathing"---meaning opening your mouth on exhalation, but closing it on inhalation. The reason this is the usual suspect is a figure showing several different kinds of typical flow rate patterns that may (or may not) indicate flow limitation problems. The original figure was drawn from source that I don't remember and this image has been posted both here at cpaptalk and over at apneaboard.com a number of times. That figure, which is posted on apneaboard's wiki pages looks like this:
Yes, I regularly see this kind of thing in my own flow data. Here's a typical stretch of this kind of stuff from my own data:
You should notice that my AirCurve 10 is
not increasing the pressure the way it would if the machine thought my airway was beginning to be compromised--there are no flow limitations being flagged and no snoring detected. And in spite of the possibility that I am opening my mouth on exhalation, there are no leaks. And that's actually pretty typical of these kinds of areas in my flow rate data.
When I see this kind of stuff and the machine is happy enough with my breathing to not increase the pressure and there are no leaks and I don't remember any restlessness and I wake up feeling pretty decent, I just ignore this stuff and write it off as a variation of my normal sleep breathing, most likely caused by my mouth opening on exhalations and closing on inhalations.
2. The second zoomed in shot is of a CLUSTER OF 6 CA's that appear to be REAL CAs to me (since they don't have SWJ or arousals prior). In the shot below you see only four of the six, but all look the same.
-- I rarely see "REAL" CA's in my Flow Rate since most of the time they have SWJs just prior. Here is what I would call a GOOD NIGHT (feel rested & low AHI) . . . so what's going on?? I wonder what would cause a CLUSTER of SIX that appear to be "real"?? Any ideas about this?
Here is your image:
What we can't see is what was going on just before the first of these CAs was scored. You say that when you usually see CAs, you don't think they're real because they've got some SWJ and/or arousal breathing before the (first) CA is scored. But in the snippet you have shown us, you didn't show us what the breathing looked like
before the first CA.
Since you self describe this as a
GOOD NIGHT (feel rested & low AHI), I'd be inclined to
not overthink or worry about this. Write it off as a visit from Pugsy's aliens.
Now if you were saying that you were seeing a lot of CA clusters that looked like this on a night where you woke up feeling like the night had been a
bad night---i.e. you woke up feeling not particularly rested and the AHI, including the CAI, was higher than you typically see, then I would think there might be something to be gained by trying to figure out what was going on.
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