Clear Airway apnea

Hi everyone I’m new on the forums and don’t know who to get help from. I don’t have a sleep doctor at the sleep study I go to but I think he’s just the manager there that just gives advice. Anywho. I’ve been on my BiPAP machine for 9 months now setting at 15:10. My ahi is normally under 5 . But since I’ve Been using the machine i still have clear airway apnea’s according to my DreamMapper. As far as events go I’ll have as low as 4 and and many as 27 events per night. Still my ahi is still below 5. The manager at my sleep study didn’t seem to worried about it. But I guess I’m just worried that my clear airway apnea’s haven’t gone away. I was diagnosed with a 94ahi during my sleep study I was just so worried that I wouldn’t go to sleep so I took 2 doses of NyQuil to make sure I fell asleep. Not sure if that had anything to do with why my ahi was so bad. I had 120 obstructive events, 2 central events, and 14 mixed apnea’s. They put me on a pressure of 17:12 at first but after being on it for a month I noticed I’d get gassy and bloated in the morning due to the high pressure. I talked to the manager at my sleep study and told me to lower the pressure down to 15:10. I actually feel better on that pressure and the ahi went down to an average of 3 ahi compared to 5,6 ahi at the pressure on 17:12. So I guess what I’m trying to ask is because I still have clear airway apnea’s is that something I should be concerned about or no because it’s still under 5 ahi. What should I do? Should I look for a real sleep dr?

If you can keep your AHI averaging 3 I would not worry too much. If you want to investigate what is happening during the night I would suggest downloading some free software called OSCAR. The SD card on your machine should have all the data for each night since you got it. This means you can go back and look at what was happening with the higher pressure, and now with the lower pressure. It may uncover some opportunities for further improvement. OSCAR requires a PC or Mac, and a SD card reader.

In general setting the pressure on a CPAP or BiPAP is a tradeoff. More pressure reduces the OA or Obstructive Apnea event. But, more pressure can cause more Clear Airway or Central Apnea events. So, the trick is to lower the pressure as much as you can without causing OA to increase.

I am not a sleep doctor, and only a CPAP user that suffers from central apnea also. You can post your OSCAR daily reports here for comments if you decide to go that way.