LINK to Sandman Auto HC Screenshots, Reports and Manual

DreamDiver has been so kind to set up all the information on the Sandman Auto generator and the Sandman therapy software at a site online.

All I did was sent the info to him and he did all the setting up, which I didn't have a clue how to do. Thanks DreamDiver.

Maybe others might like to set up the same type of information, including the clinicians manual on the same site for different machines and the corresponding software. This way you have an idea what you will get before you order. Maybe it can be called the Generators and Software Information or something to that effect? Maybe the link to the site could also be put into one of the lightbulbs under Our Wisdom? This way everyone won't have to go searching to find the post that contains the link.

I don't know if one person wants to do all this work for every type of generator or software but if others know how to do this and could use the same link, that could work. Just ask DreamDiver how he did it. I especially like the way he has set up the arrows.


Until the link is posted in "Our Wisdom" or someplace where it is easier accessable please go to the following post by DreamDiver:

DreamDiver: Sandman Auto HC Wed. Oct. 29, 2008 9:50 am for the link to the Sandman Auto Screenshots, Reports, pictures of Sandman functions, and the Manual.

Anne

http://www.montfordhouse.com/cpap/Sandman_Auto/
A rose by any other name is ... Silverlining.
Except for this one:

Ann, have you figured out how to read this graph?




O.

Anne,
I'm on dialup right now - kind of a pain.
Charter dropped out about an hour and a half ago. Not sure when it will be back.
I won't be able to stay on dialup long since we actually use the phone a lot.

I didn't know mere mortals were allowed to put stuff in the collective wisdom.
Learn something new everyday...
I'm guessing it needs to be approved by the forum admins before it's published, yes?

@ozij, thanks for the comparison. This kind of dialogue is exactly why I wanted to get some images posted. Fantastic.

You did a great job, DreamDiver.

Its not idetical to Silverlining - but very very similar. One interesting difference is that for the 96 hour graph, they'er putting A+H on the same line - those are separated in SL3.

O.

This is the one I like, nice to know the 96-hour Detailed report is still there:


Looks like Silverlining with lots of improvements, nice job Puritan Bennett, they always seem to give patients what they want.

Note: At first I had some concern as to the number of Central events seen on line 2. I am familiar with 420e's Silverlining reports since I own and use it. While at first it looks like there is way more Apnea activity than one wants to see, I see now on the Sandman version of this Waveform Detailed report that they combined Apnea and Hypopnea. In Silverlining these items are separate and found on separate lines.

So when you combine Apnea and Hypopnea, you simply end up with AHI as opposed to AI and HI individually. That is a bummer especially when you want to see these items individually for increasing the minimum pressure. They seem to put a much bigger emphasis on Central reporting when the machine really cannot do anything about them other than simply to report and avoid them. Not sure if I like that better, but the reports on my end have very tiny text and my eyes aren't that great so that can have a lot to do with it.

Personally, I prefer the Silverlining's greater breakdown of events. So Anne, what this means is the severity and frequency of the centrals seen may only look worse on the reports because they combined Apnea and Hypopnea together, this is new over Silverlining and I had not noticed it before. Seems I need to study these reports in greater detail.

Yes!! Thank you so much, Anne and DreamDiver!!

Here's the screenshot of the "96 hour" graph (my favorite, too) resized down a little more -- hopefully will show the righthand side:

As I mentioned previously the software and APAP are impressive. Another benefit of this unit is when I stop the machine in the morning, the light comes on the FRONT display and I am able to see all of the nights results on the screen even before I take the mask off. The detail in the download then confirms my first snapshot off of the results on the LCD.This would be beneficial to people that travel and do not have access to download the data while they are away from home.

I took a moment to actually read some of the graphs. One Tired Puppy hasn't asked for any feedback on her actual therapy, but some of the data makes me curious. I see 50 obstructive apneas and 43 central apneas for the night of October 13. Am I reading that right? I'm curious why hypopneas aren't shown here. The leak rate looks nice.

DreamDiver wrote:I took a moment to actually read some of the graphs. One Tired Puppy hasn't asked for any feedback on her actual therapy, but some of the data makes me curious. I see 50 obstructive apneas and 43 central apneas for the night of October 13. Am I reading that right? I'm curious why hypopneas aren't shown here. The leak rate looks nice.

DreamDiver,

Actually, only 10 are central apneas (cardiac oscillations) and 33 of them are cnt hypopneas. Often, the combination of CA and cnt hypopneas AHI is higher than the obs AHI of both apneas and hypopneas.

Snoredog enabled me to set the auto min, max, command on apnea and to disable the flow limitations. Sometimes the flow limitations still go up to over 200 and the index is fairly high. Other times it is low, as in this one. My leaks are mostly because I have to scratch an itchy nose or lift the mask a bit to put more Scaris nasal gel in my nostrils, especially the right one. My nose stuffs up easily, even though the humidifier is at about 8.

I am keeping a record of the readings on an Excel report. I don't know yet how to do anything but list them at this point.

I had GERD a couple years ago and it was pretty much healed before I started cpap. This past three weeks I have had at least 9 very bad nights where I had to sit straight up just to get some sleep. If I reclined in the least bit the chest and back discomfort was very bad every few minutes. It was never this bad before. I haven't used the machine for a couple of days because it gets worse before I even go to bed. I stopped eating all vegetables except carrots and squash until it is healed enough to sleep lying down. I think I can do that now as last night wasn't bad at all. My doctor had me double the Previcid.

I just bought a mattress recliner pump and pillow to fit under the regular mattress. It has a remote so you can lie flat, or recline to two other positions. Up to now I have been using several pillows.

I am very much open to receiving all the help I can get. My number one concern is getting rid of the centrals, whether they be central apneas or central hypopneas. On Oct 19th I had 56 obs apneas and 13 obs hypopneas = AHI 69, plus I had 2 central apneas and 54 central hypopneas =56. Total obs and cnt AHI was 125. I seem to get a lot more cnt hypopneas then obs hypopneas. Some other nights aren't bad at all.

I can try to post a screenshot of Oct excel report if anyone wants to look at it any maybe make come comments that will help. Everything is appreciated.


Anne

kewl, it shows central hypops?? Thanks for posting all that one tired puppy!

btw do any of you get the feeling we're xPAP-junkies? The newest latest shiniest xPAP machine comes out and we're all drooling over it, like it's the latest sports car or something... Hey who am I to judge, I'm eating this stuff up too!

ozij wrote:http://www.montfordhouse.com/cpap/Sandman_Auto/
A rose by any other name is ... Silverlining.
Except for this one:

Ann, have you figured out how to read this graph?




O.

ozij,

The only thing on here I don't really understand is the flow limitation. I don't understand if that is what the green markings are and what exactly they mean. I have the flow limitation disabled.

I have recorded all my October readings on Excel. I'm just learning how to use it. My biggest problem has always been trying to get the AHI down low and keep it low. It hasn't happened yet. I started of with 8 apneas and several hypopneas before titration. At titration things increased a little and the first month and the two successive months AHI just got worse. This was all before I even tried to self titrate.

If you can explain more of these things I would appreciate your help. I could post a screenshot of the Oct excel report.

Thanks,

Anne

Don't know if I did this right or not. One Tired Puppy

This is for the month of Oct 2008

If anyone wants to make comments to help me see what is wrong and how to get it right, please do so. I have never yet been able to get to consistent low AHI. any and all help is welcome.

Anne

Looks like the person who programmed the export doesn't know that the I in "AHI" stands for Index.... You "AHI obt." is not 30, that is you AH Total (24+6). Same for the central apneas and hypopneas. Your total for all events (still dealin with the first line only) is 30+37=67. You slept for about 8.75 hours, so your real AHI (index of event per hour) would be would be 67/8.75 = 7.65. On the night in which you commented you slept much better, you had an AHI (once again, total events divided by total time) of 42/8.5 = 4.9

That't not good, but it's very far from being horrid - which is what an AHI if 67 would have been. If you look at the oct. 11 screenshot, is seem like that one night was inconceivably bad - but if you look at the 11 day hour/index at the right side, its not that bad at all - an AHI of 6. Not saying its good enough, but far from terrifying.

I think that graph is a detailed blow up of what we see in the 11 day report, the green meandering line being your cycle states, the numbers on the side (I would guess) referrring only to the pressure.

The 11 day chart puts the ticks for apneas and hypopneas together - the graph I was wondering lets you see the breakdown. And mixed apneas are no longer recognized - the software reports either obstructives, or centrals.

I would guess that those bunched events - flow limitation, apneas hypopneas and central are all the result of obstructions and arousals. You rarely have them come along separately. Base on that, if that were my data I would do the following:
Raise the minumum, raise the command for response on apnea, and leave IFL=1 on. I see no reason to turn IFL off, since you only have flow limitations when an obstructive storm is in the making - and the way I read it, it is better to try to eliminate those storms with slightly higher pressure than it is to let them happen.

I don't know about the "fast return" to the minimum.

Echo, on Silverlining, those hypopneas the are not Hypopnea +Fl are probably the equivalent of "Hypopnea Central".

O.

SAG would have to confirm it, but it looks like from your waveform report graph you may have those post-arousal centrals.

This is where you have a frank obstructive apnea, then the associated arousal from it terminates then it is followed by the post central, from line 2 it appears the CA's follow the obstructive (they show up slightly to the right of the obstructive in the tic in line2 below). Where the tics seen on line1 and
line2 line up vertically, those could be mixed apnea.

While there is no better machine for identifying CA's it may not be the best for you therapy wise. You have too many CA's for that machine. The S/T machine might be the better solution.

Your Sandman reports are screen snaps, do you have a PDF writer printer driver installed where you could print that report to PDF? You can get CutePDF writer (it installs just like a printer and gives you another printer that shows up in your print selection, then when you print to it it asks for a filename.pdf, when you give it, instead of printer to a physical printer it prints your report to the PDF file, you can print one page or multiple.

I would like to see a bigger version of your report including what the parameters you are using and what your flow limitation runs are doing. Your CA's show up even at low pressure of 7 cm. Do you consider yourself a shallow breather? Do you find it difficult to take a nap from constantly being startled back awake?

You may have CSDB but you may do better at a single pressure with current machine. I would start at 7 cm, set Initial and Max at the same pressure in Auto mode so it continues to record event details, I would bump it up every few days and compare to prior AHI and CA avg.