Central v. Ostructive Sleep Apneas

You are too kind.

Tom

Tom:

You can come visit when you bury your Swift in that New Jersey landfill. You haven't done that yet, right?

More on topic, if there are low or no desats with csa, then the csa's are unimportant, right?

thanks.

caroline

I may not be understanding this correctly, but I think that the CSAs are important. I have severe CSA and my oxygen levels were ok - above 90 on both tests.

With CSA your brain is "forgetting" to tell you to breath, or is slow in doing so. Because of my CSA I use a BiPAP S/T - i.e., one with a back up rate in case I go too long without a breath. My settings are 14/4.

Caroline, I have chronic pain and fibromyalgia as well. I know that that has thrown off my sleeping for years. Further the pain medication that I take likely increases the CSAs, but is not accountable for the severity of it (AHI 128).

Bella:

So are you saying that the fact that most of my apneas were central could be important in terms of what kind of treatment i should have, i.e cpap vs. bi-pap? Even though my total apneas were pretty low?

Also, it doesn't surprise me that if you have fibro, then you have sleep problems. I think fibro is a sleep-based disease. But for me, what this doc was saying was that my sleep study suggested that i had fibro or some other chronic pain syndrome. i was saying, you're close, used to have chronic fatigue syndrome. and he wasn't going to go near that one because he doesn't treat cfs, which is much tougher to deal with than fibro. i had fibro as part of my cfs, and i know the difference, and knew that i had no fibro symptoms. ultimately, what difference does it make for a sleep study and sleep treatment? Are the remedies any different? I got the sense, or perhaps he might have said, that he would have treated me for fibro if I said I had it, but I had no symptoms.

All the analysis is interesting, but to me the bottom line is what difference does it make in terms of treatment?

I'm not criticizing--just asking genuine questions. I appreciate your help.

Caroline

No expert here either - my guess is that having centrals would affect your type of treatment. There was never any question at the sleep lab that I would have anything other than a spontaneous/timed bilevel machine - and the reason for that was because I had CSA. The timed function is needed to "kick-start" your breathing should your brain forget to tell you.

In fact because I have CSA the province provided my machine for free rather than just giving the 75% subsidy that they usually give.

(Sorry, I goofed in understanding what you said about CFS. "Syndromes are always nice to deal with, are not they?" I've been pretty lucky - my GP recognized and treated fibro a long time ago. It along with arthritis has been driving me nuts for at least 10 years.)