AHI POLL: Numbers Please !!!!

Anonymous wrote:The distinction between an AHI of 0 and an AHI of 6 is miniscule. My guess is the reason the poll is being viewed but not taken, is because the "veterans" don't want to contribute to the notion that the difference between an AHI of 0 and and AHI of 6 is even worth mentioning.

Dr. Sullivan, the inventor of CPAP therapy, doesn't put much stock in the numbers, particularly in reporting hypopneas. Perhaps we should follow his example.

That makes a certain amount of sense to me. I think that Mike's anniversary posting is helpful. I think I need to focus on compliance (which I have in spades), comfort (still struggling - leaks mainly) and a slow increase in my sense of well being (happening but not at the rate I desire). I can get in a hurry and coming back from years of poor sleep or no sleep takes time - for some of us months, even years.

I think the software is good to get a baseline and to correlate that increasing sense of well being (or problem solve) but it can really, for me, get a bit goofy from the geek perspective and I start attempting to achieve perfect control where it is not possible and perfection where good enough is good enough.

My ideal goal would be to be able to be in bed sleeping soundly for 7-8 hours without waking up, except for a single bio-break maybe, and not being woken up by hose pulling, mask leaking, nostril or face soreness or rainout and then to get up sort of refreshed. After 3.5 months I am not there yet.

SB

Snoozin' Bluezzz wrote:My ideal goal would be to be able to be in bed sleeping soundly for 7-8 hours without waking up, except for a single bio-break maybe, and not being woken up by hose pulling, mask leaking, nostril or face soreness or rainout and then to get up sort of refreshed. After 3.5 months I am not there yet.

Does that ever resonate with me. After 4 1/2 months, 4 masks, 3 machines, 1 oximeter, and lots of tweaking, I'm not there yet either. .

Progress is slow, but incremental and measurable, both quantitatively and in terms of how I feel. Certain milestones have definitely occurred. In the last week, for example, the bio-breaks have begun to taper off, and I am actually amazed that has happened. I never really viewed the bio-breaks as much of a problem, and had no real expectation of them diminishing.

Best of luck, SB.

Regards,
Bill

Bump, bump.

I think AHI numbers make a difference, even between 0 to 6. While is might not effect your health much is does measure how restful your night was.

I have been having trouble the last week, and my AHI went from 1.3 to 2,8 on the avg. Stress and interuptions, plus congestion got worse, but mostly stress. I went back with the Comfortfull Mask and reset how I handles congestion and it got better but the days that were 2.8 i did feel worse but I was also short on machine sleep time.

Grrr!, the ComfortFull mask broke again when I took it off this morning, so it's back to the Epoxy Again, I'm going to keep repairing it until it weights ten pounds then I pitch it. I hope my Devcon hasn't all set up! Jim

Goofproof wrote:I have been having trouble the last week, and my AHI went from 1.3 to 2,8 on the avg. Stress and interuptions, plus congestion got worse, but mostly stress.

You can feel the difference between 1.3 and 2.8? That is incredible.

Anonymous wrote:

Goofproof wrote:I have been having trouble the last week, and my AHI went from 1.3 to 2,8 on the avg. Stress and interuptions, plus congestion got worse, but mostly stress.

You can feel the difference between 1.3 and 2.8? That is incredible.

But, believable to me! I can tell the difference in mine, too.

Den

For some reason my AHI jumped to 4.8 last night, usually I'm below 2.

I had more sleep than isual, I clocked over 9 hours which means at least a good 8 hrs of saleep - though I do wake up 3 or four times.

I feel like I was hit with a baseball bat today. Body feels like crap - brain at half power.

Tom

How does this work? Does an increase in AHI from 1.3 to 2.8 mean there were the equivalent of 1 and 1/2 more events per hour of sleep?

So let's say the first night you sleep 6 hours and your AHI is 1.3 for a total of 7.8 events for the whole night. The next night you sleep 6 hours and your AHI is 2.8 for a total of 16.8 events for the whole night. So you had 9 more total events on the second night? Is that how it gets figured?

bump.

Guest wrote:How does this work? Does an increase in AHI from 1.3 to 2.8 mean there were the equivalent of 1 and 1/2 more events per hour of sleep? So let's say the first night you sleep 6 hours and your AHI is 1.3 for a total of 7.8 events for the whole night. The next night you sleep 6 hours and your AHI is 2.8 for a total of 16.8 events for the whole night. So you had 9 more total events on the second night? Is that how it gets figured?

Guest, you have it exactly right. The "index" means "average (OA+H) events per hour".

Thanks Ric.

It's amazing to think that the average Joe without OSA can have an AHI of 4.9. For those same 6 hours of sleep they can have a total of 29.4 events for the whole night and that's considered normal.

Yet some people with OSA look at their data and can feel the difference between 7.8 events for the whole night and 16.8 events for the whole night. I wonder if we apneacs are hypersensitive and if these events bother us more than they bother "normal" people. It seems like we're getting better sleep than they are!

Ric wrote:Guest, you have it exactly right. The "index" means "average (OA+H) events per hour".

correction: make that average MINUTES (OA + I) per hour

Guest, good observation about our AWARENESS. I'm sure those other people have crummy nights and have nothing to blame it on. It's nice to have a data-based awareness of what is happening.

untreated from my ss: 33
now is 1.3 average.
all hypopneas, almost no OA

i think the very very dry air where i live is not good for me, i use a hh set on 5 all of the time. i only wish it would go to 10 !

R is the name of a really great statistical language - Learn about it at http://www.r-project.org/. Now this language has a couple of real advantages. One is that it has built in and verified routines for almost every statistical calculation known to man. The other, perhaps more interesting, is that it is free software. Yep, powerful statistics, great graphics, free software.

Runs on Linux, Windows, Mac. If you need it for another platform, source code is available.

If you have software that does not have exactly the statistical capabilities that you want, well, you need not work out the things you don't know on the back of the envelope - you can use R to do it all.

R's heritage is "S", and the syntax is a lot like APL, in that loops are rarely needed because arithmetic applies to every member of a vector or matrx without looping. Also, it has workspaces where programs and associated data are saved together.

If you are interested in more statistics than the software you have can give you, you might look in this direction. The package comes with fairly complete how-to instructions - a primer that teaches the language step by step and so forth.

The reason I wanted to post numbers was to see the kind of treatment many were experiencing.

SO far those who responded, for the most part, achieve tremendous treatment. That is VERY ENCOURAGING and is a testiment to the therapy.

Those of us who are not low can still feel good about the improvement we have achieved vs. no treatment.

I think the poll does a lot to geive us some benchmarks for the therapy, acknowleging that individual results may vary and are not necessarilyt under ones specific control.

Tom