Three Decades of CPAP - Astounded by C-Flex

My new CPAP machine arrived last night - it is a Respironics AutoPAP C-Flez.

I'm purely astounded at the C-Flex. I tried going to sleep with C-Flex set to 3 - it felt like the air was being "pulled" from my lungs - after years of "pushing" out the air against pressure, well, suddenly exhaling was no effort at all.

Too little effort - I could not get to sleep.

It was so easy to breathe out that it was uncomfortable to me - because of my long history with CPAP. I had to get up and reset the machine to 2 on the C-Flex. Prescription is 8-17. It looks like the APAP is determining exactly the same thing that my sleep study did.

Someone pointed out (when I said that I thought that the Aria breathed "stiff") that the newer machines breathed easier than the old machines, like the Aria. I pointed out that my point of comparison was a very old machine.

Now I've had a chance to do a night or two on a machine from 2 decades ago, a machine from last decade, and one from this decade.

There is no question in my mind - this machine shows its "age".

The progress of the first 10 years is not apparent when one compares the Aria with the ancient Remstar - yes, there is "wonderful" digital circuitry, and there is not so much height and you theoretically can reset the pressure without an manometer although the pressure number is not accurate, you need the manometer, but, well, it does not breathe any better, in fact, I would suspect that the compliance of someone breathing on an Aria would be worse than someone breathing on my ancient machine - because of the exhalation work.

Turn that around to today's state of the art machine - Autopap, lots of recording - yes, you have good, solid recording, lots of information, but the human factors are there as well - someone paid attention to how easily it breathed. If you can't get someone to use the machine, well, if it is a rental, they return it and just pass it along to the next consumer, so you don't sell another one.

But, well, if doctors learn about compliance, they tend to recommend machines that patients comply with.

I have not had a chance to compare this machine against other machines which have similar features - and I am quite unlikely to be afforded that opportunity. While it is possible that the Resmed machine is as comfortable it does not do the exhalation thing at the same time as the APAP thing.

Plenty of airflow, plenty of "juice". And it is so little work to exhale against that an old hand can't crank it up - yet.

I have that friend with CHF - he seems to take his machine off at 5 AM or so - he wakes up in the morning, the mask is on the nightstand and the machine is turned off. Every night - he does not remember it. My belief is that he could use this machine and that he would do it all night.

I might try to go there with one of my old machines and let him try this one - he knows his prescription and I could reset it easily enough. I'd just spend the night on the couch. Maybe I'd use his machine. I'd have to find the model and get someone to tell me how to reset it.

I was surprised when I read the first day's data - it said that I had an AHI higher than it did when I was in the sleep study un-PAPped. Is there a how-to somewhere to read Encore Pro numbers?