Can anyone help me? Oximeter data vs Watchpat

Hoping the lovely people on this forum can give me some help/advice.

History:

- Have had non refreshing sleep for a number of years now.

- Wife has seen me stop breathing in my sleep a number of times.

- I snore/wake with a dry stale mouth/ get headaches that last all day upon waking. I smoke (I know, I know). I don’t drink alcohol. Suffer with insomnia but ok once asleep.

- Sleep is never refreshing and I feel like crap as a result. Have developed insomnia whereby I’m knackered all day, perk up at 22:00 and finally feel tired at 2am but sleep fine once asleep.

GP has ran various blood tests over the years (you name it they’ve tested for it) all to no avail. I have finally been referred to my local hospital (yay!).

Bad news -huge waiting list and lots of complaints of poor care.

So I thought I’d try and take some decisive action and get to the bottom of this quickly as I am really struggling now with sleepiness and general tiredness.

I purchased an overnight oximeter and based on that data, opted to do a watchPAT study privately. The results are hugely different.

The WatchPAT study suggests just 1.8 AHI per hour where as my oximeter data shows repeated drops and heart rate spikes.

Does this data point to anything? Is it still worth exploring sleep apnea or does this rule it out. I’ve tried various things so far, from light therapy to sleep hygiene etc. to no avail.

TIA! From a chap who is desperate for refreshing sleep and has many months wait for anything on the NHS.

MaltyMan wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 24, 2026 10:48 am

I purchased an overnight oximeter...

Which make/model oximeter did you buy?

Given your symptoms, especially your wife's observation it seems likely that you have sleep apnea. A one night sleep study, especially one with just pulse oxy channels may not be very accurate. Since you have the recording pulse oxy you should track your ODI and events for a while to see how repeatable the results are. You may want to try wearing the sensor on different fingers to see if its repeatedly accurate. If you decide to get another home sleep study you may want to look for one with more channels, some include respiratory effort with a band or attachable devices, some others detect breathing directly with cannula.

What positions do you sleep in? Is there a correlation between the O2 events and your sleeping positions? When your wife observes you not breathing what position are you in?

If your oxy allows you to set an alarm try setting one a something like 88 or 89. This will wake you during the event so you can know what position you are in, and how you feel, or that perhaps you are awake.

Go for the hospital sleep test in any case.