Perfectly said! Yes, you can search all over this board and the Internet to find the specs as people have extracted them from these manufacturers, but it shouldn't be the job of any user to comparison test the machines for them.DHC wrote: Is there really ANY valid argument that a standard for AHI used by all vendors would NOT be valuable?
Well then, you have seen the problem up close and personal. Do you think it's fair that patients be led to believe that these machines are all the same? All you just do is strenthen the argument for some form of standardization.ozij wrote: Having experienced 4 different autos, I can tell you they work differenty. Of the 4 there were two I whose way of delivering air was intolerable to me. The two others give me informative trends about my breathing events, and I used each machine's trends to improve the therapy each machine gave me.
Yes, I did get the degree - used it for about 10 years and left it for better things. It was an omen that after all those years of hard work, the calligrapher spelled my name wrong on my diploma - so I threw it in the trash. Academic and scientific environments can get nauseating after a while and they certainly don't pay the bills very well.ozij wrote: I am shocked at the way both you the, scientist (? did yoiu ever get that PhD you studied for?) and the original poster ignore the fact that the dependent variable (AHI) is one achieved by 2 different machines, at different pressure levels. The "simple and elegant comparison" you admire confounds 2 independent variables. A no no every budding scientist learns to avoid when he or she is in his or her educational diapers.
I haven't been parading my credentials here - Calist can do that. I haven't used them in over 20 years, so they are irrelevant now. I was never a big fan of letters and accreditations.
And yes, what DHC did was simple and elegant - he used what he had at his disposal - you rarely get to do the definitive test, certainly with limited resources. He also got to the point where he could show that the machines were delivering different pressures. What's he/she going to do ... spend a lot of time and money to prove what is really the realm of the manufacturers to compare and/or disclose?
Everyone is starting to get their panties in a knot over this one - we see simple information that makes one wonder what we look at on our computer screens - period. Why don't people compare any information they do have to see how we can make this work better for all of us here?
I slept 7 hours last night and my spanking new System One APAP told me I had an AHI of 0.0! Now is that a trend, or am I being fed a pile of crap? It scored me with a VS of 7.6 (which I think means 7.6 snores detected per hour). That's about right - and my original test scored me at about 1 snore every 5 seconds, so the machine is helping with snoring somewhat. But when it comes to reporting AHI - either the machine is the "silver bullet" that Bill Moulton says does not exist or it is the biggest garbage data generator out there. Yes, I slept better than I used to - but how much better? I seriously doubt the machine prevented all events! It's got to be full of itself! Or, as the expression goes ... should I throw away the crutches?
I find the 0.0 so disappointing that I really am thinking about going out and getting a Resmed S9 Auto - which at least won't tell me that it has cured me completely.
Anyway - let's stop the banter and try to cooperate. Like I said before I wasn't impressed with science or academics - mainly because people fought over minutiae just like we are doing now. I think we can rise above that and really trade good information amongst us. Isn't that why we are all here?
