Sierra

Another more conservative option would be to set your new machine exactly the same as your old and use it for a few nights to see if the new machine is behaving any different. Then when you have a baseline with the new machine, you will be able to see what difference the new settings may make.

Since you are using SleepyHead, I find the leak graph to be the best indicator of leaks. See example below for a good and bad night for leaks. I recall both were with the P10 mask.

Bad Night:

Good Night:

If you are looking for one number I find the % of time above the Leak Redline to be the best single indicator. I like to see it under 1% and ideally zero.

Some of the SH messages which show up on the Welcome screen can be a little harsh. I go more by the time over the leak redline and the leak rate graph. If you are using a DreamStation it is the bottom graph that is the important one. It is the unintentional leaks.

The starting pressure for the ramp is really a personal preference. You can't set it higher than your minimum pressure though. I like to have it where it feels like it requires no effort at all to breathe when I am awake. I recall originally it was about 6-7 cm for me, but now it is at 9 cm. I can have it that high as I am now using a fixed pressure of about 11 cm.

On your minimum pressure I think you would likely see some reduction in your RERA and flow limitations with it in the 8-9 cm range instead of the 6 cm on your old machine. Your machine is going up to the 10-10.5 range automatically, so I doubt that having the minimum higher is going to feel much different from a maximum pressure point of view, especially if you use the Smart Ramp feature. The Respironics machine like your old one and the new DreamStation like to bump up the pressure periodically (the red spikes on the pressure chart), and then almost as quickly bring the pressure back down again. Having a higher minimum can take some of that irregular changing pressure behaviour out of the machine. It can result in a more comfortable ride over the night. Your maximum pressure of 12 looks fine.

What type of mask are you using? I'm guessing it may be a ResMed AirFit P10 nasal pillow based on your reference to clips? If so I have used that mask for some time and I gave up on the clips, and finally cut the two straps, overlapped them about 1", and sewed them up again. It helped a lot.

I started to post to your "whats going on" thread, and this one came back from the dead. Without repeating too much, your results look very good. About the only thing I notice a bit out of line is the RERA number. It seems high, and is not counted in your AHI. What you might want to do is zoom in on some of those RERA events to see what the flow rate wave form looks like. You can do that with the Events tab and then click on the RERA events individually. Or what I do is just left click on the event of interest in the Events Flags area and repeatedly left click to get the level of detail I want. The up arrow also zooms in more, and the down arrow back out. Left and right move along the time scale. What you are looking for is some flattening out of the top side of the inhale cycle. A RERA event usually ends with some kind of flow disturbance indicating you are be aroused but not wakened by the event. This data indicates you may have been a good candidate for the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet For Her machine. It has been designed to respond quicker to flow limitations which tend to initiate the RERA events. But, I gather that ship has sailed.

There are some potential ways you may want to consider to minimize the RERA. I see most (but not all) of these events are occurring at lower pressures. You may want to ask about increasing the minimum pressure on your new machine to 8-9 cm. It may address some of these flow restrictions before they become RERA events and disturb your sleep. It appears you have Flex set at 2. I normally suggest that there can be benefits to turning that off to reduce maximum pressures and CA events. But your maximum pressure is not that high and your CA events are low, so it may not make sense in your case.

I believe you new machine is a DreamStation Auto? If so I believe it has a SmartRamp feature you may want to consider using. It holds the pressure at a selected ramp start pressure and only ramps pressure up to your minimum when it detects you are asleep. If you end up with a higher minimum I would suggest you also get the SmartRamp turned on with a start pressure of 7 cm. That should let you get to sleep comfortably.

Other than that, it looks to me that you had a very well set up machine that has been working well for you.

Those results look pretty good. It looks to me like you have all your history. For future posts, I would just do that first one -- the Daily Detail. The format looks pretty good except I would ditch the pie chart as it covers up more important detail on the left and is somewhat redundant. To hide the pie chart use File, Preferences, Appearance, and then uncheck the box that says something like "Show event breakdown pie chart".

The forum seems to have issues when a bunch of graphics are uploaded to a thread, and especially if the poster is a relatively new user. Don't know exactly what it is, but perhaps it is part of the forum spam protection... As a work around you when you post your new machine results, I would suggest just posting the daily detailed report screen.

In any case if I click on your user name, I can see your posts. Good to see that you got your computer issues sorted out. To me those SH charts look very good, assuming it is comfortable to you. About the only thing I noticed was that RERA seem a bit high.

I now noticed that your thread is back. So I will post further there....

The normal treatment for sleep apnea is a CPAP machine with a mask which delivers air pressure and is worn every night. The other most common method is using a custom dental appliance called a MAD. It has to be put in each night.

As I understand it, the current version of 1.1.0 is supposed to support all Windows versions from XP through to 10. That said I have never run it under 8.1. That version apparently has a nasty trick of trying to write to the SD card and messing it up, so you should make sure the card is locked before you put it in the card reader on the PC.

The other quirk with SleepyHead is that when it installs two .exe files are created under C:\Program Files (x86)\SleepyHead. One is the normal open GL version and the other the broken GL version. The open GL version is the preferred one and the one linked to the menu by default. The broken GL version is to get around some incompatibility in graphics cards, and has to be linked to a menu icon manually. I think if that is an issue you will not get it to run at all. Another computer is your best bet...

Sounds like you have it all figured out. I have not personally switched machines while maintaining a SleepyHead record, but I have seen others that do it. It should just put a new entry in the Machine Information section on the Statistics page, and a new line on the Changes to Prescription Setting area. Don't forget to make one more transfer of data from your old machine tomorrow. That should take much less time.