ASV Seems to work

Well my new DS960 ASV machine seems to be doing what it is supposed to. My AHI has been well below 5 except one night it spiked to 5.7. Total OA for the past week 3. Total CA for the week 8. That is all week not each night.

On the other hand Hypopnea is still frequent every night. Not enough to raise AHI above 2 most nights, but still annoying.

Is there a secret to fixing that. If I connect an O2 concentrator, would that help?

I am actually learning to deal with the occasional puffing from the machine by simply focusing on my breathing for a bit and the machine calms down.

Are you on oxygen during the day? If so you should be using it at night also. I wouldn't expect it to lower your AHI but you would still need it.

My ahi is similar to yours as far as total number, but my number is almost entirely made up of hypopneas. Not sure how to get rid of those.

Congratulations on your good numbers with the 960P.
Could you oost you pressure numbers as well as your patient initiated breaths, et.?

I'm having problems with hypopneas also.
I'm working with my sleep doctor on what parameters and within what range I can change.
Because the 960P is such a complex system, it is important to not fiddle with the settings without having your doctor on board. It can breathe for you for long periods; making a mistake with the settings can result in Insufficient oxygen.

Stormynights wrote:Are you on oxygen during the day? If so you should be using it at night also. I wouldn't expect it to lower your AHI but you would still need it.

No supplemental O2 at all now.
When I was first diagnosed I was put on O2 overnight, before my sleep study and continued after I got my S9 Autoset.
I got lazy about a year and a half ago and simply stopped using it.

My question was should I start using it again with my DS 960 in an effort to reduce Hypopnea and desat events?

bwexler wrote:

Stormynights wrote:Are you on oxygen during the day? If so you should be using it at night also. I wouldn't expect it to lower your AHI but you would still need it.

No supplemental O2 at all now.
When I was first diagnosed I was put on O2 overnight, before my sleep study and continued after I got my S9 Autoset.
I got lazy about a year and a half ago and simply stopped using it.

My question was should I start using it again with my DS 960 in an effort to reduce Hypopnea and desat events?

How low are your O2 levels getting?

An hypopnea is a low level of air movement when you inhale.
It comes frome either a partial airway collapse or a low effort to breathe.

Adding O2 won't change either of those.
It will only add more O2 to the air intake and keep your SpO2 from dropping.

My SPO2 drops below 90 frequently with the occasional low of 86.
The average seems to be about 92 or 93.

I would love to see it stay around 95, but that seems no more common than 88.

I don't use the oximeter every night. Just to lazy and have not seen great variations when I do.

bwexler wrote:My SPO2 drops below 90 frequently with the occasional low of 86.
The average seems to be about 92 or 93.

I would love to see it stay around 95, but that seems no more common than 88.

I don't use the oximeter every night. Just to lazy and have not seen great variations when I do.

I still don't understand why the ASV doesn't keep our O2 levels perfect. If we don't breath, it gives us a breath. Why aren't our O2 levels staying high considering there is always air coming through no matter if the breath is triggered by us or the machine?

I wish I knew the answer to that one too.
Best guess is as we get older our bodies don't work as well as they once did and can't suck as much O2 out of whatever air we breath.

I will have to find someone who has gotten older so I can ask them about my theory.
Do you know any old people?

bwexler wrote:I wish I knew the answer to that one too.
Best guess is as we get older our bodies don't work as well as they once did and can't suck as much O2 out of whatever air we breath.

I will have to find someone who has gotten older so I can ask them about my theory.
Do you know any old people?

Haha, unfortunately none that are on ASV.

bwexler wrote:I am actually learning to deal with the occasional puffing from the machine by simply focusing on my breathing for a bit and the machine calms down.

The trick that I find works best for me is to slowly exhale. It seems that it watches the pauses in between breaths when deciding whether to impose a timed breath to make me breathe.

So when I wake up after a dream (having been breathing relatively fast) and I consciously try to slow my breathing down, if I breathe like I normally would (large-ish gap between each breath), the machine keeps jumping the gun and trying to get me to breathe faster. If I instead slow down the speed at which I exhale, leaving a smaller gap between exhale and inhale, it adapts more quickly.

Of course you can also turn it off and back on.

If the issue is that it's ramped up the pressure, you can always press the "ramp" button to reset its notion of how much pressure it should be applying.

All that said, it will take you a while to fully adapt to ASV. Even though I took to it very well, I'm really just now (~5-6 mo) getting to the point where my breathing has adapted to it almost effortlessly.

If I wake up and the machine isn't happy with the way I am breathing it jumps in "puffing" to make me breath it's way.

You said it better than I do.

I simple take deep breaths in and out. I had not noticed the gap between breaths but I think you are correct.
For me one deep breath in and out and the machine stops at 1 puff.

obviously i'm really lucky on the asv machines. I found them very comfortable from the first day and i always run it wide open and every night i have times when it's maxing out the pressure at 25 but it never wakes me up. My normal ahi now is around 0.2 - 0.5 and i sleep 8 - 9 hours . I'm using a 960 also and my settings are Epap 7.6, min PS =3, max PS = 17.4. My doctor's settings were epap 6.0 ps 4.0 but i found that i was 95% epap was 8.4 so i raised it a bit and my ahi dropped an order of magnitude - from 2 to .2