Challenges of Diagnosing Complex/Central/Mixed Sleep Apnea

Challenges of Diagnosing Complex/Central/Mixed Sleep Apnea

I think the first challenge is that the medical community is willfully ignorant of the variability of any Apnea brought about by situation or time.

So, they actually do the sleep tests and titration in a laboratory. No one regularly sleeps in a laboratory and if they are trying to do so they will not sleep the same as they do at home. You cannot get “in home” results “at laboratory” - no way – never will happen. The results you get in a laboratory are therefore compromised.

But even if you move the test and titration to the home, if you do it only one night it will not catch the true picture of what is actually going on. Here we PAP data users have the doctors at a great disadvantage. We have seen the changes that occur, with the seasons, due to stress at work, due to a long weekend watching sports, due to a lot of rich food in the winter time, due to extra physical activity in the summer time, due to illness, due to more time on the couch, due to doing more exercise --- and --- who would have ever thought – due to successful PAP therapy!!! We are human beings – we change constantly – during a day, or week, or month, or season, or year. I myself went from needing a CPAP pressure of 15 to needing only 8 cm/H2O in only 300 days.

I think that Dr. Ted Belfor puts it well when he says that “CPAP is a mechanical solution to a physiological problem”. The truth is that we do not understand what causes these problems (OSA – simple, mixed, complex, or central) nor do we really understand how PAP factors into the treatment of these problems and especially when talking about what changes PAP will cause regarding these problems. We need to do a lot more basic research!!

My thoughts for now,

Todzo

I got a sleep study that showed mixed. if you have headaches, fog, chest pains it could be centrals, also heart racing- I'm still struggling with my resmed asv. I take klonopin which seems to help