Sierra

When one gets older it is good to get a pneumococcal vaccine. I have the Pneumovax 23 plus the Prevnar 13. I believe the Prevnar 13 has now been replaced with the Prevnar 20 which protects against 7 more strains.

From what I can see your machine is behaving normally. Obstructive apnea events and flow limitations seems to be triggering the increases in pressure. Your obstructive events seem to be occurring at certain times of the night, and not at other times. I would wonder if the sleeping position may be the difference. Most people are more likely to have apnea events when they sleep on their back. Also your events seem to be coming in bunches. Some people have some success with wearing a soft cervical collar which can help prevent kinking of the neck. You can find them at Walmart or on Amazon. May be worth a try to see if it helps.

On displaying the sleep report I just make the daily report full screen and press F12. That will let you save it as an image. Then left click on the file and drag it into an open post here.

It sounds like that mask with the two tubes from the top of the head is not the right mask for you. I have considered buying one like that, but the tube arrangement scares me off.

Do you have the machine set to auto start and auto stop? Perhaps that is part of the issue with it starting. I do use the auto start feature, but I always manually shut the machine off in the morning. You may want to disable the auto start and stop, and just manually start and stop the machine.

I am not a medical professional, but I don't see any way that using a CPAP when you have a cold or sore throat would make anything worse. The virus and bacteria are in you already and you have to breath air in to stay alive, so there is no way to avoid it whether you use a CPAP or not. You may want to clean your mask and hose more often, but like I say you are the source of the bacteria, not the mask or machine.

I have had COVID once and probably twice. I used the CPAP through both infections and my thoughts are that the CPAP actually helps with the congestion and breathing. A more sophisticated form of a CPAP called a ventilator is used in the treatment of COVID in hospitals. They help with the breathing and keep your oxygen levels up.

If the air flow to the mask gets blocked I would expect the ResMed to simply maintain the pressure it is set to in fixed CPAP mode, or go to the maximum set pressure if in Auto mode.

I would suggest the FDA is the neutral authority and in fact approval is required by them before the CPAP can be marketed, at least in the US and Canada. FDA tests for safety and effectiveness.

Yes, it is more difficult to breathe comfortably with the mask on and the machine off. That is why we wake up. My wife had an unfortunate experience a few years back while we were using our trailer and camping off the grid. In the beginning I set her up with a 12 volt inverter to 110 AC running off the trailer battery. It worked ok, but the inverter fan would turn on during the night due to the current draw and wake us up. So for the next trip we "upgraded" by eliminating the inverter and going with a ResMed 12 volt DC to 24 volt converter. They are more efficient and have no fan so are quiet. With this arrangement the CPAP would shutdown several times during the night and my wife would wake up who in turn would wake me up. Not a good arrangement, but she did not die! I finally tracked the problem down to the S9 DC to DC converter not being able to take the full load of CPAP with humidifier, and heated hose. Two replacement converters acted exactly the same way. By this time I had an A10 machine with the DC to DC converter and it worked just fine even though the A10 and S9 units were rated at the same output. I finally concluded that the S9 units had a design problem from the factory and the overload setting was too low. She now has an A10 and uses an Amazon knock off converter and it is also just fine.

Here is an article about the issue of safety. The article basically concluded that there is no risk of suffocation if the power goes out while using a CPAP, because of the mask venting that is built in. They report on an incident in New Zealand where a person with apnea died while being without power as it had been disconnected. This is a red herring issue though as the person was no longer using a CPAP as they had no power. They were just trying to sleep with no CPAP at all.

Can I Die If The CPAP Power Goes Out?

If one is going to get into one of the battery backup solutions, ResMed has a good document that shows how much each type of machine takes in the various configurations. If you use more pressure current draw will be higher. And a heated hose and humidifier take the most current. If you want to run on a battery for an extended time it is best to turn off the heated hose and humidifier. The other point is that voltage converters (12 volt to 24 volt) are more battery efficient than using inverters. These devices can be bought from ResMed or from non OEM suppliers on Amazon. I got the last converter for my wife's machine from Amazon and it seems to work well.

ResMed Battery Guide

We use these solutions when in our trailer, but don't worry about it when we are at home. Our electrical system is extremely reliable. The distribution system is all underground, and we live relatively near to a large hospital so it means our section of the grid has a high priority for reliability.

EPR stands for Expiry Pressure Relief, or a pressure reduction each time you exhale. It can make breathing easier. For example if your pressure is 8 cm and EPR is set to 3 cm, then on inhale you get 8 cm of pressure and on exhale it is 5 cm. My experience is that EPR can also reduce the number of hypopnea events.

What type of mask do you use? If it is a nasal mask and you open your mouth during sleep that can cause a dry mouth.