Sierra

My only obvious symptom was snoring. I did not have trouble getting sleep and feeling rested before CPAP. I was diagnosed at an AHI of 37.

Good to hear you are keeping on top of the diabetes risk. I suspect the consequences of undiagnosed diabetes is much worse than undiagnosed apnea.

I have a ResMed, but I set the humidity at Auto. It defaults to that when I plug in the heated hose. I set my temperature at 27 C (81 F). I do make it through the night with those settings. It is pretty dry here in winter. At least on my machine if I run out of water it gets pretty stinky. I suspect that even with demineralized water there is some residual in the water reservoir and that gets kind of cooked when you run the thing dry.

I am not a believer that the SoClean is necessary. I also worry about the effect of ozone that it uses on the life of my equipment. My standard procedure is to rinse the complete hose, mask, and reservoir with full strength household vinegar. I follow that with some warm water and Dawn dish washing soap, and then a final rinse with just water. I try to do it first thing in the morning and then hang it up to dry for the day, so it is ready for the evening. I also think once a week is enough.

It sounds like you have a full face mask. They tend to be quite large and can be moved during the night when you sleep on your side. One of the tricks is to try to sleep right at the edge of your pillow with your mask hanging over the edge of the pillow. I also find that using a satin pillow protector instead of a standard cotton pillow case lets the mask and headgear slip more easily on the pillow without displacing the mask.

Hope that helps some,

Yes, if it was a home study, they typically do not flag RERA events. Most insurance companies will not approve a CPAP based on the RDI index which includes RERA events as well as apnea and hypopnea events. There is some controversy in the industry on how serious RERA events are. My thoughts are that if they lead to arousal, they certainly do not contribute to a good sleep. I would also expect that a CPAP would help reduce the incidence. That said, I still get 1 or 2 RERA events every night at 11 cm of pressure...

See this link if you want to take a deeper dive into RERA.

I am not a medical professional, but from what I know about apnea, your readings are in the normal range except for the moderate desat numbers. Did your study make any note of RERA (respiratory event related arousal) events?

I assume you are using a ResMed 10 AutoSet based on your comments? If so are you using the EPR function? If not you may want to try it with it set at 3. This will put your inhale pressure (IPAP) 3 cm of pressure higher than your exhale (EPAP). It is not a lot, but it should be better than no EPR, when you are not getting enough air. As sleeptech suggests, a BiLevel machine may be necessary. It can provide more differential between EPAP and IPAP.

The DSX500 is the Auto CPAP. It is the best one in the APAP series, but may not be ideal for treating central apnea. You can find some information on it at this link:

DreamStation Auto CPAP

I would keep an eye on your central apnea events. That DSX500 should report them. If you can't get total AHI below 5, you may need some adjustment to your pressure settings. Or, in the worst case a different type of machine.

Welcome to the forum. It sounds like all considered your first night went very well. I recall my first night with a CPAP was my second worst night of sleep ever. The worst was when I did my home sleep study to get my apnea diagnosis. Some comments:

• Home CPAP machines only count machine running time. They may report it as sleep time, but they have no good way of determining if you are asleep or not. 7-8 hours of sleep is a good target.

• I have a ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet, and it does run pretty close for water, but as long as I fill it to MAX it never runs out. We live in a pretty dry climate. You may want to check your humidifier settings. I have a heated hose, and set my humidity on Auto. That combination seems to work well.

• You should be able to sleep on your side. What specific mask do you have? There may be some tips based on the mask type. Most avoid sleeping on their back because it does tend to increase the frequency of the apnea events.

I also noted that I now get up in the night much less frequently too. Most nights I don't get up. Your water and getting up issues remind me of when I was diagnosed with diabetes about 20 years ago. Being thirsty, drinking a lot of water, and getting up in the night are common signs of diabetes. If you have not had a blood glucose test recently you may want to ask your doctor about it. Kind of like sleep apnea, the % of non diagnosed diabetes cases are alarming.

Hope that helps some, any questions, just ask...

I have a free app on my smartphone that measures noise in dB. Our of curiosity I tested my ResMed AutoSet while I wore the mask. I got about 23 dB on inhale and 26 on exhale. So there is a slight difference. However the general room noise is about 23-24 dB, so it is really hard to hear the machine over the background noise, even with my hearing aids on. If you have a smartphone or ipod or tablet you may want to try that to see what kind of noise level you are getting. I was using the unweighted slow response setting.

Strange. Here is a document which I believe gives the model numbers of the various types of DreamStation.

Yes, all CPAP machines have to follow the inhale and exhale cycle of the user's breathing. When you breath in they have to speed up to maintain pressure as the flow goes up. When you breath out they have to slow down to let you exhale through the mask vent while holding pressure constant. The ID label should look something like this:

http://www.apneaboard.com/dreamstation.jpg

I believe you will find the model name on the bottom of the machine. Just make sure to dump the water before you turn it over!