Help! How to survive a "bad apnea" night

Xney wrote:The lower line is the "vent" leak rate, which is, the amount of air that's expected and supposed to be leaking from the mask to clear CO2

Not quite right. In SleepyHead for Respironics machines some people are seeing dual leak lines.
The top line is indeed the total leak (vent rate plus any excess leak) but the lower line is strictly excess leak only.
It would be similar to what you see with your ResMed leak line. Vent rate has been removed and what is left is excess leak only.
That bottom leak line on the SleepyHead reports may not be totally correct though. It was difficult trying to come up with a proper calculation for vent rate when APAPs with variable pressures were used and thus variable vent rates.
So Mark sort of abandoned that data point. Not everyone will get the dual leak lines. I used to get them with my Respironics machine then one day the bottom line left. I have no idea why some people get both lines and others don't.

Frankie84 wrote:I don't understand the leaks reading. it has 'leaks' and 'total leaks'. What's the difference. Is there some place i can go to read about understanding the data? I couldn't find that info on the program.

Check out my signature line and the link for the SleepyHead tutorial. I think some of your questions will be answered there.

If you can post an image of your report we can offer ideas as to whether the leak is possibly part of the problem.

How to post images thread in case you don't know how.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81072&p=737779#p737779

Pugsy wrote:
Not quite right. In SleepyHead for Respironics machines some people are seeing dual leak lines.
The top line is indeed the total leak (vent rate plus any excess leak) but the lower line is strictly excess leak only.
It would be similar to what you see with your ResMed leak line. Vent rate has been removed and what is left is excess leak only.
That bottom leak line on the SleepyHead reports may not be totally correct though. It was difficult trying to come up with a proper calculation for vent rate when APAPs with variable pressures were used and thus variable vent rates.
So Mark sort of abandoned that data point. Not everyone will get the dual leak lines. I used to get them with my Respironics machine then one day the bottom line left. I have no idea why some people get both lines and others don't.

*blink* thanks for the clarification, that's backwards from my old one. Weird..

Pugsy wrote:So Mark sort of abandoned that data point. Not everyone will get the dual leak lines. I used to get them with my Respironics machine then one day the bottom line left. I have no idea why some people get both lines and others don't.

If I run my PR S1 model 550 as straight CPAP (which I did for a test a month ago) I get both leak lines displayed in Sleepyhead, one above the other. Then if I switch it over to APAP mode, I get only one leak line represented. Odd, but that's the way it is.