Francesco

Great info and comments. Personally I had to bug my 65 year old GP for a long time before he finally ordered a sleep test for me.

I was diagnosed with severe apnea. When I began therapy I was given a full face mask. I hated it and was on brink of abandoning therapy. Instead I tried a nose pillow mask. I adapted to it quickly.

While I still have "bad nights", and I have complex apnea which is difficult to manage, I no longer nap every day and on most mornings I awaken feeling fresh and alert. For me, it's been a game changer.

Typically, of late, my composite AHI has been averaging between 3 and 4 (occasionally lower, occasionally as high as 7) over about 6 hours of sleep which seems to work well for me.

Generally my events are scattered thru the night with some stretches of early sleep being largely uninterrupted.

The overall AHI has typically consisted of a mix of obstructive, central, and hypopnea events with the CA component usually being the largest.

The CAs tend to mostly appear: (a) just as I am dropping off to sleep, (b) as I try to fall back asleep after waking during the night, and (c) most often in a flurry of events just prior to getting up (say during last 40m or so of night). These flurries can often consist of 10 or 12 events strung together over a brief period of a few minutes.

There seems to be a "handoff" issue from my waking breathing to my sleeping breathing in the patterns I've observed using Sleepyhead to view the data.

Does this help?

I have been a CPAP user since last fall following my diagnosis of severe SA with a primary Central Sleep Apnea component.

I find my Obstructive Sleep Apnea to be pretty well controlled but the Central SA is a real wildcard. Never know what to expect.

I am interested in connecting with anyone who has a similar profile to compare notes.

Thanks!

I had begun to wonder about this as well. Felt my hearing was deteriorating with cpap use. There appears to be evidence this is possible. The following is pretty clinically dense reading but a casual internet search will provide others as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4896658/