Puritan Bennett Sandman CPAP

I asked my DME about the Puritan Bennett Sandman CPAP and they stated that they had so many problems with Puritan Bennett products, that they stopped carrying them.

Does Puritan Bennett have a bad record as far as reliability goes?

Thanks.

Allen

From what I've been reading in the forums the last two years .... I'd take that w/a BIG grain of salt. Some DME's have been known to be "less that truthful" on occasion - when it benefits their best interests.

On the other hand, the Sandman has only recently been introduced and maybe their experience was w/only one, the first one they provided, and they lost interest in providing any more. (And they just might not have liked them 'cause they weren't used to them and didn't want to put forth the effort to figure them out. (Why read the Clinicians' Manual when you can get by just using the Quick SetUp Guide?).

Lets see what PB owners have to say from personal experience.

Slinky wrote:From what I've been reading in the forums the last two years .... I'd take that w/a BIG grain of salt. Some DME's have been known to be "less that truthful" on occasion - when it benefits their best interests.

On the other hand, the Sandman has only recently been introduced and maybe their experience was w/only one, the first one they provided, and they lost interest in providing any more. (And they just might not have liked them 'cause they weren't used to them and didn't want to put forth the effort to figure them out. (Why read the Clinicians' Manual when you can get by just using the Quick SetUp Guide?).

Lets see what PB owners have to say from personal experience.

From the confused look on my DME's face when I asked about the Sandman, I don't even think that they even heard of one. I asked them "Do you know anything about the new Sandman cpap that's out?" and they more or less replied "what's a sandman?"

I'd sure like to be able to try one out. I just looked on the Puritan Bennett website and the specs for it says that it's noise level is 26db. I measured my M series Auto CPAP the other day and it seemed to have a noise level of about 48db! I measured mine from about 1ft away from it. I don't know how far away the Sandman's db level was measured.

Allen

Specs for my AutoSet claim it produces 24 dBa running at 20 cm H20.

I sleep with some intentional noise in the background anyways so any noise produced by the machine is not going to matter much to me. Heck, I used to sleep in a truck with a diesel engine on fast idle all night.

My first PB malfucntioned after about a year, and it was replaced immediately.

The BP auto - and the Sandman have their own way of analysing people's flow limited breathing - and for some breathing patterns, this misfires and causes uncontroled raises in pressure. So they have a software definition cancelling it - which probably half or more of the DME's don't know.

My second PB has been working fine for 2.5 years (more actually).

PB/Covidien reporting software is great.

In addition to the Resmed AutoSet, and the Sandman Series, DeVilbiss too has a quiet new series, the Intellipap.

When I can afford a backup machine, it will be a Sandman.
O.

I have a Sandman Auto but it's not long enough for me to comment on durability. It has a smaller footprint than the M-Series, it quieter, has better humidifer capacity and no blue lights. So far I like it very much. I'm still working through (with help from forum members) what some items on the reports mean -- the reports provide quite a bit of detail. Very happy with it so far.

Mindy