Data Help Please

Maxie wrote:I was not able to access any of these but here is what I got from the menu:

My guess is that you are looking at the settings from inside the patient's set up menu? Since you say you can't change anything, that means the tech who set things up has "locked" you out of even the standard settings that a patient is supposed to be able to change. You will need to access the clinician's menu to change things. Do you have a copy of the clinician's menu?

My comments about the various settings are in this color

The first buncth of things are SETTINGS that directly involve how the machine delivers the Pressure to your upper airway.

SETTINGS
Mode CPAP
Set Pressure 10.0 this should be your prescribed pressure setting. You don't want to change this without instructions from your doctor---at least for now

Max Ramp 45 Min. The ramp up period lasts for 45 minutes. When you turn the machine on, it starts the pressure at 5cm and takes 45 minutes to ramp the pressure up to your full pressure of 10cm. My understanding is that when Max Ramp = 45 in the clinical menu, the patient should be able to change the ramp time to be anything from 0 minutes (no ramp) to minutes in 5 minute increments. If you regularly take less time than 45 minutes to fall asleep, pick an appropriate ramp time. If you feel as though you are suffocating when you first turn the machine on, you might not need the ramp OR you might need a higher initial ramp pressure.

Start Pressure 5.0 The ramp starts at 5cm, which is pretty low. Some folks feel as though they are suffocating at pressures that are much lower than what they use while asleep. On the Resmed S9, you can increase the starting ramp pressure ONLY through the clinician's menu. So if you need the ramp, but you feel suffocated at 5cm, you'll need to either beg the DME to increase it OR learn how to do it yourself.

EPR Off EPR, a major patient comfort feature has been turned OFF by the tech who set your machine up. EPR is a significant patient-comfort feature that provides pressure relief at the beginning of every exhale. For many people, EPR makes the machine significantly more comfortable to use. And since folks tend to NOT use a machine that is excessively uncomfortable to exhale against, for many people, EPR is a critical patient comfort feature for encouraging compliance. The other settings in the clinical menu are: Ramp Only and Full Time. Ramp Only enables the patient to turn on EPR during the RAMP time only. As soon as the ramp period ends, EPR is tured off. If EPR is set to Full Time, then EPR remains in effect for the whole night. I'd recommend EPR = Full Time.

EPR Level Off The DME has totally locked you out of the EPR settings. This effectively means that the DME has prohibited you from even trying EPR. IMHO, the DME should have set this setting to Patient. Because of the importance of EPR to some people's comfort, I'd say you need to either call the DME and politely insist that they enable EPR for you OR learn how to change these settings from the clinical menu yourself.

Mask Nasal The choices here are Nasal, Pillows, and Full Face. You should have access to this through the patient menu so that you can change this setting when you change mask types. The major thing this setting does is adjust the way the machine the leak rate, but right now your machine is set up to not record anything but compliance data. More about that in a bit.

The next batch of things involve additional features and their setup.

OPTIONS
Climate Ctrl Auto Are you using a ClimateLine hose??If so, this sets the machine to automatically adjust the humidity level to maintain a constant absolute humidity level that is based on the temperature selected for the ClimateLine hose. Unless you're feeling like the air is too damp or too dry on a regular basis, there's no need to worry about changing this setting.

Sleep Quality Usage THIS SETTING MUST BE CHANGED FROM Usage to On for your machine to record and display full efficacy data. In my humble opinion you MUST either call the DME immediately and insist they change this setting to On OR you need to learn how to get into the clinical menu and change this setting yourself. You have a wonderful machine that can record AHI data, the full wave form, flow limitation data, snoring data and leak rate data as well as the usage data; but it records all this wonderful stuff ONLY IF Sleep Qualty = On. By setting the machine up with Sleep Quality=Usage, the DME has turned your machine into a (temporary) brick.

SmartStart Off The tech who set your machine up has prevented you from being able to choose whether you want to use the SmartStart feature or not. SmartStart allows the machine to turn itself ON/OFF based on whether it detects a person at the other end of the hose. In other words, when SmartStart = On, the machine will turn itself on when it detects you taking a couple of big breaths through the hose. It's useful if you have to put the machine under the bed or in some other difficult to access spot. Ideally, SmartStart should be set to Patient in the clinical menu so that YOU, the patient and USER of the machine can choose whether to use SmartStart or not. Personally, I never found SmartStart useful, but there folks here who love it.

IPR Inhale Med There are two choices available in the clinician's menu: Medium and Fast. I believe this setting controls how fast the machine raises the pressure back up when EPR is being used. But you've been totally locked out of EPR so right now I believe this setting is moot.

Date 22 Feb 2012 It's always good to see the machine knows the correct date. This is also the place where you CHANGE the TIME setting when you go from standard time to daylight time. But note, you can ONLY change the time from the clinical menu.

Time 18:12 Use this to check the accuracy of the time. [color]

The last two groups of settings are not particularly interesting for the user.

REMINFDERS
Off The tech who set the machine up chose to not make the machine remind you with on on-screen message that it's time to replace such things as the humidifier tub, the hose, the mask, the filter or bring the machine for a service check or send the SD card back in for a compliance check. If you want reminders, it's easy to set them up for yourself through the clinical menu.

CONFIGURATION
Language English
Restore Defaults Never select this: It wipes the data AND resets the pressure settings and other settings back to the way the machine was when it was manufactured.

Erase Data Never select this: It wipes the data from both the machine AND the SD card. But it does not reset the pressure settings, the EPR settings, and things like that.

Press. Units cmH2O Specifies that the units for pressure are the commonly used cmH20 units. There's never a need to change this

Temp Units This should be set to either F or C to select degrees Fareinheit or Celcius when you are using the ClimateLIne hose. Obviously you want this setting to be the one you use in daily life

I've printed the clinician's manual for my machine and before I could work on it any more I came down with a bad cold which I am just now getting over so I didn't feel like messing with it. I've printed your post and I will work on it when I get home tonight. I was able to change some of the settings as I changed from a face to a nasal mask and I set the reminders for filters, etc. (BTW having the bad cold didn't keep me from using my machine and nasal pillows! )

Another thing to be aware of...
If the DME made your setting in the software and saved them to the SD card, that will override anything you do on the machine. It will keep going back to the "card settings". If this is the case, wipe the card/reformat, change your settings on the machine and then reinsert the card. Then you will be in charge. Don't worry about the DME getting P.O'd. It's your machine, your therapy.

Lizistired wrote:Another thing to be aware of...
If the DME made your setting in the software and saved them to the SD card, that will override anything you do on the machine. It will keep going back to the "card settings". If this is the case, wipe the card/reformat, change your settings on the machine and then reinsert the card. Then you will be in charge.

That's good to know, Liz. I don't have this problem because my DME and doctor both fully support me in managing my own therapy. But I read a post some months ago from someone who had used ResScan to adjust his settings and then couldn't figure out how to undo it so he could make adjustments from the panel again. I'm glad to know that if for some reason someone did program my machine that way, it would be simple to get control of it again.

Yeah, It's just one of those crappy little things DME's can do.

Lizistired wrote:Yeah, It's just one of those crappy little things DME's can do.

I was pretty sure the "lock" couldn't be very secure, because to really lock patients out, you'd have to lock everyone else out too. Passwords for something like that would be a huge hassle because the only continuity that can really be counted on is the actual user. In the life of a CPAP machine, DMEs come and go.

But the way that other thread dwindled off without a solution, I wondered if they'd actually done something semi-secure. I imagine that the OP realized how obvious the solution was, said, "Duh!" And left it at that.

I have the SleepyHead Users Guide and I'm still not exactly sure what the graphs mean so maybe someone can help me.

First there are AHI days with no data but there is usage data. What does that mean?

Second, I assume that my machine rounds off as it says I have 0.5 AHI episodes which is a bit different from SleepyHead.

Maxie wrote:I have the SleepyHead Users Guide and I'm still not exactly sure what the graphs mean so maybe someone can help me.

First there are AHI days with no data but there is usage data. What does that mean?

Check this against the daily detailed data. I believe that those days in the overview with a "missing" AHI, but where there is usage data correspond to days where the AHI = 0.0 OR they correspond to days where the only available data was the usage data for some reason.

Second, I assume that my machine rounds off as it says I have 0.5 AHI episodes which is a bit different from SleepyHead.

SH rounds everything to two decimal places. The S9's on-board LCD data truncates the data at one decimal place if I recall correctly.

An example may help. Suppose you have 9 events in 6 hours. Then AHI = 9/6 = 1.666666666666666666...

SH will ROUND this to two decimals and report AHI = 1.67.

But instead of rounding the AHI to 1.7, the LCD on the S9 will simply truncate the decimal at one decimal place and report AHI = 1.6.

Lizistired wrote:Another thing to be aware of...
If the DME made your setting in the software and saved them to the SD card, that will override anything you do on the machine. It will keep going back to the "card settings". If this is the case, wipe the card/reformat, change your settings on the machine and then reinsert the card. Then you will be in charge. Don't worry about the DME getting P.O'd. It's your machine, your therapy.

You sure?? I just did a test and it all worked the same as it did months ago when I made a test.

When you load new settings on the card with Resscan it wipes all the data off the card and puts a Settings folder on it with settings files. As you said the S9 reads the settings and changes the machine settings. It then automatically reformats the card and installs a new summary data file and a blank DATALOG directory on it. In my test after it was done doing all that I was able to go right into the clinician's menu and change things back to what I wanted. There is no "going back to card settings" because the settings file is deleted after the settings are loaded.

idamtnboy wrote: You sure?? I just did a test and it all worked the same as it did months ago when I made a test.

Well, No, not now. That's interesting. A couple of members have had that problem. They changed the settings multiple times only to have it revert back, and the solution was to wipe the card. I have never tested the function. I just remember that's what worked for them.

Here's the thread I mentioned earlier where the OP accidentally locked himself out of the clincian's menu with ResScan.
viewtopic/t63811/Bizarre-lockout-on-my-S9-Autoset.html

Otter wrote:Here's the thread I mentioned earlier where the OP accidentally locked himself out of the clincian's menu with ResScan.
viewtopic/t63811/Bizarre-lockout-on-my-S9-Autoset.html

Thanks Otter, I was wondering if there was a "lock" feature in the software. I've never looked into it that much since I don't use it.

Otter wrote:Here's the thread I mentioned earlier where the OP accidentally locked himself out of the clincian's menu with ResScan.
viewtopic/t63811/Bizarre-lockout-on-my-S9-Autoset.html

I read through that thread. It must have been a fluke the OP experienced. I have looked and looked and cannot find anywhere a discussion about locking the S9 so that you cannot make changes, other than of course the usual clinician menu access. The clinician's guide to the S9 has the word 'lock' in it only one time, and that is to note the yellow open padlock in the upper right corner of the clinician's menus. The existence of the open padlock could imply the existence of a locked padlock, but the code to lock it, if there is one, must be a Resmed secret.

I cannot find any kind of setting in the Resscan settings option that would lock the S9 against opening the clinician's menu. The word 'lock' is not even in the Resscan Clinician's Manual.

With all the different versions of ResScan, I wouldn't even begin to guess. I'm not going to try to track it down because I have never had the issue. If I ever do, I'm just gonna wipe the card and move on. It works.

Can I just say thank you to everyone on the board who is helping with this sort of thing? I was just diagnosed with Severe Obstructive ... was asked "why in the world" I would even WANT to be able to access my efficacy data, referred to the "affiliated" DME supplier (who wanted to charge double the market/online rate for second class machines) ... and was nearly frantic between still being "in the fog" and knowing the solution was out there? I just ordered a Resmed S9 Autoset ... which should arrive tomorrow... and I can hardly WAIT to set it up and take charge of my life again You guys just don't even KNOW how much it means to me to be able to have INFORMATION!! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!