How bad can pressure induced central apnea be?

JohnBFisher wrote:

archangle wrote:... "It does not matter if the event is pressure induced or not."

Well, since I'm asking about pressure induced centrals, it does matter in terms of this thread.

Do you believe your damaging centrals were pressure induced, or is it possible you had centrals before CPAP?

No, no. I don't think you understand my statement. REGARDLESS of the underlying cause, if central apneas occur, they can and will damage your body. The underlying cause does NOT matter.

You're still not understanding the question. I'm asking how bad pressure induced central apneas can be. Or more properly, how bad they are likely to be.

Non-CPAP induced central apneas can be damaging or even immediately fatal. If you stop breathing long enough, you'll be dead right then.

I'm wondering about someone who doesn't have centrals without CPAP. If they develop centrals while getting CPAP, how severe are the CPAP induced centrals likely to be? Immediately fatal? Severe damage to heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. Mild damage, sleep disturbance only, harmless, etc.?

jnk wrote:A sustained desat is not necessary for a central event to be "real," as I understand it.

As I understand it, the original most common definition of "apnea" required O2 desat or EEG arousal plus 10 seconds of "not breathing."

CPAP manufacturers are able to detect the "not breathing" part, but not O2 or EEG, so they started mislabeling breathing events as apneas. It sells more CPAP machines, doctor visits, in-lab PSG tests, and maybe scares some patients into compliance, so a lot of people are starting to accept or at least gloss over the difference between these events and the traditional definition.

There's also some question as to what "not breathing" means. The machines detect a certain level of reduction in flow volume as "not breathing" and also do some weird stuff in terms of deciding when an events ends that tends to inflate the duration of machine scored events. Once the airflow drops below a certain level, the event is considered to continue until a certain higher level of airflow is regained. At least that's what it looks like to me from looking at event durations and flow graphs.

archangle wrote:

Bright Choice wrote:I had cpap induced central apneas that did not go away with time. I don't know about how the waveform changed, but I do know that those apneas made my spo2 drop even though I was on cpap. Those hypoxic events made me feel bad the next day. I am now on S9 Adapt ASV, no longer have drop in spo2 and feel much better during the day. IMHO, I would not minimize the impact of ca's on the effectiveness of xpap therapy. My ahi runs at zero and I have been titrated to round out waveform.

Sounds like you had a good diagnosis, mostly that they checked for O2 desats to be sure the central apneas were "real."

Actually, I was monitoring spo2 at home with my own monitor. First doc suggested that I try titrating cpap or apap to eliminate desats. No pressure changes eliminated the desats. This led to compsa diagnosis and ASV.

archangle wrote:

JohnBFisher wrote:

archangle wrote:... "It does not matter if the event is pressure induced or not."

Well, since I'm asking about pressure induced centrals, it does matter in terms of this thread.

Do you believe your damaging centrals were pressure induced, or is it possible you had centrals before CPAP?

No, no. I don't think you understand my statement. REGARDLESS of the underlying cause, if central apneas occur, they can and will damage your body. The underlying cause does NOT matter.

You're still not understanding the question. I'm asking how bad pressure induced central apneas can be. Or more properly, how bad they are likely to be.

Non-CPAP induced central apneas can be damaging or even immediately fatal. If you stop breathing long enough, you'll be dead right then.

I'm wondering about someone who doesn't have centrals without CPAP. If they develop centrals while getting CPAP, how severe are the CPAP induced centrals likely to be? Immediately fatal? Severe damage to heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. Mild damage, sleep disturbance only, harmless, etc.?

But that's just it. There is NO difference to the body. None. Nada.

Okay, with neurological problems you are more likely to have an occasional central apnea last longer. But otherwise the damage is the same. Period. And the central apneas will be almost identical ... from all the measurements during a sleep study. The difference is that with pressure induced central apneas, they do not appear until higher pressures are present.

Regardless of the underlying cause, the lack of oxygen due to the central apnea has exactly the same impact on the body.