New user, have a few questions

Hello, Excited to be here!

I recently started using a Resmed Airsense 11 autoset after being diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea (15+ events) about 2 months ago.

I was directed to post here by the CPAP subreddit, this forum was highly recommended.

I understand that this treatment will take a while and there are growing pains - definitely in for the long haul here.

So, my main issues so far are leaks and waking up 2-3 times a night. I'm also having some light dry mouth. I was hoping to share a screenshot from OSCAR and see if there's some data in there that can help me get to the bottom of this.

Pressure range 6-12, ramp up is set to auto. Pretty much all my settings are defaults right now.

I am using an Airtouch F20 large mask and the Airsense says my "seal was great last night"

Humidifier is "Humidaire 11"

Any questions or missing information, please let me know.

(FYI, I just bought a CPAP pillow as I am a side sleeper. Hoping that will help)

Thanks in advance!

https://imgur.com/a/7kj27yf

bhalverchuck wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 09, 2023 3:25 pm

the Airsense says my "seal was great last night"

Are you talking about seeing Mr Smiley for leak management on the machine LCD screen?
If so...Mr Smiley takes a lot of excessive leak to happen before he goes away and Mr Frowny shows up.
Mr Frowny doesn't show up until 30% or more of the night was spent with leaks above 24 L/min.
Your last night report shows just a little more than 7% of the night in large leak territory above 24 L/min.

So your seal wasn't necessarily "great last night" but it wasn't horrible either. You didn't include the leak graph on your image of your report.

Any leak that causes wake ups...no matter how big or how little....needs to be fixed because if nothing else it is disturbing sleep. Anything that disturbs our sleep is unwanted.

On your shared image...the snore graph is present and pretty much useless but the leak graph is absent and it's kinda important because we don't know just how much you went above 24 L/min for that 30 minutes of large leak.
So any future images to be shared....omit the snore graph and include the leak graph please.

If that report had been my report and I slept right through that large leak and it's only 30 minutes....I would shrug my shoulders and move on.

Thanks Pugsy, I've attached a link with the leak rate included. Not sure how I missed that.

https://imgur.com/a/F2npQ9e

Yes, it does appear that I didn't wake up from that huh?

Interesting to know that about the "seal was great" thing

That's a lot of excess leak...up around 60 ish L/min...and that's a pretty bad leak but it's only 30 minutes and you very well could have slept through it.
I suspect mask movement leak but like I said....I have seen worse and slept through it and I feel decent so I don't go to extraordinary measures to fix that sort of leak when it doesn't last long. 30 minutes isn't the end of the world IMHO and sometimes what I have to do to "fix" leaks ends up causing more sleep disturbances than the leaks might cause so I don't worry about brief leaks like that (even that large) when they aren't prolonged.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Now if you spent half the night up around 60 L/min....it would be a different story because once you get over 40 L/min the machine might miss events totally and that nice low AHI might be an error because the machine simply was clueless and didn't know stuff was happening that shouldn't be happening.