DME told me "Auto PAP suck!" Is this true?

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject: Re: DME told me "Auto PAP suck!" Is this true?

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I was told that if a person has severe apnea (I have 70/hr untreated)


I have severe sleep apnea (59/hr untreated) I can tell you my AHI avg. is less than 1.....with my remstar auto CFlex.

I am also an APAP fan and get great treatment from the remstar auto. Like many others, it reduces the pressure delivered to me and typically operates at 6cm or 7cm compared with the prescribed cpap pressure of 11cm, yet I have an AHI below 1.

There have been several long threads on this topic in the past and most in this forum support apap, but there is a small but important minority who report the apap approach doesn't work for them. As pointed out by an earlier poster, however, the apap can also be run in straight cpap mode, so it still seems to be the best choice. Nevertheless, the apap doesn't work for everyone and a cpap or bipap is better.

Having said that, it does seem many of your DMEs put profit ahead of patient need.

Well, I'm jealous of ya'll then, because on auto OR CPAP mode, my AHI is as of last night was 29.3

Wish I COULDN'T read the statistics, it's annoying the heck out of me

Barb (Seattle) wrote:I was told that if a person has severe apnea (I have 70/hr untreated) the machine possibly could have difficulty keeping up. By the time it detects an apnea, and ups the pressure to the appropriate one, your need could reduce. Then, when you need less pressure, it still is at the higher pressure. It does make sense to me that if you're only having an apnea every 3 minutes, that the machine would have time to adjust, as opposed to having more than one per minute.

My untreated AHI is 71, with 22 apneas average per hour. The AHI goes up in REM to 98. Yeap, severe sleep apnea. Doc said no to APAP. Got GP to write a script for a CPAP for a spare. I bought an APAP for my "spare" machine. Paid out of pocket. My AHI is less than 3, and I am still tweeking. I think I will be able to get it lower yet. I am not having any trouble with nonresponcive apneas, and my pressure doesn't get "stuck." My pressure is HIGH, but it always has been.

I do plan to some day set the apap for cpap mode at my titrated pressure. Not looking forward to it, because I know it is to low. My most recent titration was for CPAP 13. The last titration was for BiPAP 18/13. I think in some parts of the night the 13 is right, and in others the 18 is closer. With the APAP I spend most of my time at 16.

I plan to test this out and bring in the paper work to the sleep doc. After that I may need to look for another doc! He might not be to happy with me getting the machine he told me not to buy!