Inflated AHI

Just started using my zeo, which confirms that nearly all my CA's occur during the times I know I am awake but have my cpap on (i.e., before sleep onset and after wakening in the morning before I take the CPAP off). Wondering if anyone else out there has noticed this pattern. I think that means the AHI's I am looking at for sleep are considerably inflated. My cpap graphs show this pattern but until I had the ZEO I could not be certain. Would appreciate any thoughts and experiences with this kind of situation. Thanks for all the help and info you all have shared with me in the past. My sleep doc is a nice person but sort of useless, really (didn't tell me about the software, etc.).

Yes, it is inflating your ahi, but as long as you know what is happening, and track your data you know the centrals are not a problem for you. I find that almost all my events since starting cpap are centrals and I attribute almost all of them to the breathing changes at the awake/asleep interface and to normal breathing stops when changing sleep position.

If you are using SleepyHead software you can do a click and drag for the time that you are asleep and omit the awake time and those centrals and get an AHI for only the time you are asleep. No way to save it to make the change permanent but you would have a better idea to AHI that is quick and easy. The AHI changes on the flow graph chart when you isolate time frames with the click and drag to include only the time you were asleep.
If you can't use SleepyHead then you just have to try to count the events that occurred between the awake stuff and manually figure your AHI.
Or if you look at it and during that time you didn't really have but a handful of events...then just sort of eyeball it and if okay then move on.
Maybe keep some sort of paper log of what you are seeing as a record if it is important to you.

I don't remember which software or machine you are using. But if SleepyHead and you don't know what I am talking about let me know if you have SleepyHead and I will get you some pictures that will explain it.