My Experience With the F10 FF Mask

Hey Everyone,

I said I'd post the results of my experiments with various FF masks. To date, nothing has worked for me. Leaks have been the main issue. But my last experiment was the Resmed AirFit F10, and it WORKS! I had to do quite a bit of experimenting. One thing I discovered is that ASV just isn't going to work for me. The pressures they gave me after the titration go so high that no FF mask I've tried will handle the leaks when the pressures get high.

It turns out that this isn't a real problem though! I changed my APAP (S9) pressures so that the high setting is 18 (rather than the 12 used with the nasal mask), and the minimum pressure set to 9 (rather than the 7.5 with teh nasal mask). And I turn the humidifier waaaay up. With those settings I can sleep through the night with the F10, and Sleepy Head reports AHIs of under 4.0 most of the time. And the leaks are pretty minimal.

The only problem now is that I still mouth-breathe and my mouth gets dried out.

I thought I'd pass that on since Vivian hit me up for an update:).

Cheers,

Ken

that's great! Are you using mask liners as well, or just the mask? I'm trying to break into my F10 when I'm home, but have leak issues. Just ordered the liners from our sponsor.

I really like the F10 - I feel so free without the forehead arm and a strap around that part of my head. I use liners, and Sleepyhead rarely reports large leaks. The large leaks I do have rarely wake me up. My dry mouth is becoming much less noticeable to me as time goes on, but I solved that with a double-walled mug that has its own cover and straw. I pull the elbow off anytime I wake with cottonmouth, and take a sip or two of water. It works well for me that way since the elbow is directly opposite my mouth and there's no need for me to take the mask off. If I needed to I could use a flexible straw and bend it to make it reach my mouth. One or two sips of water a couple times a night doesn't create a greater need for a trip to the bathroom, so my trips there have decreased as well.

KenTheriot wrote:Hey Everyone,

The only problem now is that I still mouth-breathe and my mouth gets dried out.

I find this true for me with most Full Face masks. Personally I think it is because of the way the masks are designed, they literally blow the air directly at your mouth. If your mouth opens, the air flow blows into your mouth circulates around and back out before blowing out the vent.
Take an air hose and blow air directly into your mouth and it will dry out. I don't care how good your humidifier is.

I took my FF mask and added a piece of plastic (cut from a plastic cup) just inside where the air comes in. The air blowing into the mask then hits the plastic and is then forced up or down away from my mouth. It still pressurized the entire mask, but it didn't dry my mouth out nearly as much.

Hope this makes sense to someone reading my description.

Edit: below is hopefully a pic.

[img=http://s27.postimg.org/fk34fvy4f/IMG_20 ... 182355.jpg]