Therapy hours question

I have a remstar auto aflex system one. I'm trying to understand why the therapy hours vary so much (as much as 5 hours) when I use the machine all night every night. Thanks.

walker3117,
Welcome to the fourm!

walker3117 wrote:I have a remstar auto aflex system one. I'm trying to understand why the therapy hours vary so much (as much as 5 hours) when I use the machine all night every night. Thanks.

First question: Where are you getting the "therapy hours" numbers from? The machine's LCD or SleepyHead or Encore? If you are getting them from the machine's LCD, what time of day are you checking the machine? The PR System One REMStar's update their LCD data at noon Greenwich Meridian Time, and if your normal sleep period crosses the noon GMT line, the LCD will only show the data for before noon GMT. The data recorded after that goes into the next day's numbers.

And then there's this: Therapy hours are "scored" only when the machine can detect actual breathing. In the presence of some large leaks, the machine may be on, but it cannot detect breathing. And that time will not count towards "therapy hours."

So the next question is: What do your leaks look like?

Walker: welcome to the forum.
To more effectively help you, we need you to fill out the equipment portion of your profile.
Sadly, some machines do not have leak data--we hope you have a "good one"

walker3117 wrote:I have a remstar auto aflex system one. I'm trying to understand why the therapy hours vary so much (as much as 5 hours) when I use the machine all night every night. Thanks.

If you're not using software to evaluate your data, I would strongly recommend it. It'll take the guesswork out of the data.
I believe your "problem" is due to WHEN you're checking your data. (if it's in the LCD screen)
As I understand it, the System One doesn't update the information until after Noon. (and that may be GMT, too.)


Den

.

I'm getting the number from the LCD screen. It lists 0 for large leaks and as far as I can tell I'm not having much if any leakage (I feel around the nasal mask for leaks). I check the numbers after 12 noon GMT (5 am PST). Could there be leaks that I can't feel? Maybe I'll try my full face mask and see what happens. I'm really confused about this.

Check the #'s before noon for the previous night.

walker3117 wrote:I'm getting the number from the LCD screen. It lists 0 for large leaks and as far as I can tell I'm not having much if any leakage (I feel around the nasal mask for leaks). I check the numbers after 12 noon GMT (5 am PST). Could there be leaks that I can't feel? Maybe I'll try my full face mask and see what happens. I'm really confused about this.

The LCD data will only contain the data that's recorded before 5 am PST (noon GMT). If you sleep later than 5 am (PST) the data from 5 AM until wake won't show up until the NEXT day on the LCD. It could be that's what's causing the discrepancy between what the machine says the therapy hours are and what you think they should be.

And yes, there can be leaks you don't feel; much of the time they're not relevant, but sometimes they can be. And very rarely the machine can lose track of your breathing even when the leaks are not in the official Large Leak range.

Rather than switching to a FFM, why don't you try downloading SleepyHead and seeing what the data actually looks like for the full sleep session? SleepyHead will use the time zone setting on your computer to adjust the GMT timestamps on the data so that it shows up in a way that is meaningful relative to your actual sleep schedule.

Thank you for your help. I can see I need to get a card reader. Does it matter what kind I get? Does it reset the data card every time you take it out?

you might not need to buy a card reader. System One is using an SD card - the reader for this SD card is usually already built-in in desktop and laptops since more than 10 years ago.

Thanks, I'll check my computer.

walker3117 wrote:Does it matter what kind I get? Does it reset the data card every time you take it out?

If your computer doesn't have a slot for the SD card you can get any generic reader/adapter to use a USB port.

Removing the SD card to use the software doesn't reset anything or do anything to the data on the SD card or the machine.