Clear Airways are pretty much my only events

For the last for nights being new back to CPAP. got my new machine the S9. My sleep study 5 years ago said cpap of 7.

I am running auto 7 - 12. with EPR of 3. Ramp from 5.6.

I have toyed with the settings as in Moving to 8-12 and then a night at 0 EPR. @ 8 - 12 I was having more apneas, and with 0 EPR it would push my mouth open and I would wake up 30 times with dry mouth and no cpap working lol.

My sweet spot to me is 7 - 12 with EPR 3. My AHI is 1.2 - 3. All events being Clear Airways based on sleepy head.


Any ideas or changes I should make?

Need to see the leak line, to see how the apneas relate to the leaks. Also need to see the pressure line. Do you move much during the night? It is possible that the alleged clear airway apneas are just a "side effect" of moving. If your AHI is only 1.2-3.0, it is tough to be able to do very much - maybe a slight lowering of your maximum pressure - although if you are getting them when you reach the maximum pressure that may provide some indications. Sleep docs will not be concerned so long as your overall AHI for the night remains below 5.0.

The night with 0 EPR my leak rate was high the entire night due to my mouth being open.

The leak line is super low. Most of the time 95% there is 0 leak. On the chart after a Clear airway there is a slight increase in leak right after the even is corrected.

Pressure stayed the same when I look at the even there was no increase in pressure.

My max pressure for the last 4 lights is 10.2 which is well below 12.

It's possible that the Clear Airway (Central) events are either normal centrals or awake/semi awake breathing artifacts.
It's normal to have centrals during sleep stage transition...like sleep onset.
It's also possible that the machine is flagging awake/semi awake pauses in breathing because our awake breathing is much more irregular and since the machine can't tell if we are awake or not it can flag those pauses by mistake. If you look at your graphs do you see an increase in CAs near a time that you were likely awake?

Even if all your Clear Airway events were the real deal centrals...you aren't having enough of them for doctors to be concerned.

I have seen some of the CA right at the time i wake up. Most are within 20 mins of me waking up.

If you are opening your mouth in sleep, you are losing therapy air. An open mouth doesn't create leaks.... those are from the mask. Your numbers are good, but most mouth breathers use full face masks. I'm not suggesting that you switch to FF because your numbers are good, just that it's something to give consideration to.

I'm in a similar place, mostly see centrals in my data. Partly that's because you don't see the OSA's that the machine was able to prevent, only the ones that the cpap wan't able to prevent, so that can fool you (read: "me" *smile*) into thinking that you are only experiencing CA's. I think that part of the effect of using a cpap, at least for some of us, is to create CA's where there were none (or a lot fewer) before. I had no CA's in my sleep study, but have enough most nights to have an AHI of 1 to the mid 2's. If you do the arithmetic, that's up to about 20 CA's over an 8-hour period. Not a lot, but enough to make you wonder where they're coming from.

What fun.

I'm a little lost then. Your saying my S9 won't record a mouth open a leak. It should because there are tons of air dumping out my mouth when i open my mouth.

chriscummings83 wrote:I'm a little lost then. Your saying my S9 won't record a mouth open a leak. It should because there are tons of air dumping out my mouth when i open my mouth.

Mouth opening and air exiting through the mouth will indeed show up on the leak graph and the numbers.
It's actually fairly easy to spot. I usually do it at least once a night myself. Most of the time I don't reach large leak territory though.
I don't understand librarylady's reasoning behind what she said.
Air escaping the airway will be recorded as leak no matter if it is coming from around the mask seal or blowing out the mouth if the mouth isn't covered.

BTW....I can open my mouth and not have air escape...I can yawn and not have air escape...I can talk and not have air escape.
Open mouth doesn't always mean all the air goes flying out.

Don't be afraid of the word "central." Centrals aren't necessarily more harmful, just harder to get rid of.

With numbers that low, it's probably not a big deal unless you're having really long centrals. See how long they last.