Sierra

I have never heard of the company but looking at their website, they seem to be a credible company located in France. They also say their machines are manufactured in France. For this reason they may be an alternative to the popular North American machines; ResMed and Phillips (DreamStation). Both of these seem to be in very short supply these days potentially due to supply chain and chip shortages. I have never seen this brand available for sale at on line stores in Canada or the US. But, it must be available in France or the EU.

The Ecostar model seems to be more of a compact portable machine and does not appear to have a humidifier. The machine that would be more equivalent to the ResMed AirSense Auto, and the DreamStation Auto would be the DreamStar Auto. It is hard to say how well these machines work in auto. I did not see much detail on how they determine whether an apnea event was central or obstructive, and how the machine responds to each.

You may want to check on the possible side effects of any medications you are taking. I started Lyrica a couple of weeks ago and it is certainly giving me some dizziness symptoms at times.

My weakness is not chocolate. It is black licorice either from Australia or Finland. Both good!

BUG, I am curious if you have tried pregabalin (Lyrica) for your RBD? I have been having some lower back and foot pain issues and my doctor has given me some samples of Lyrica to try. I am not sure yet if it is really helping all that much. I am at 75 mg which is a very low dose. But, because of the way it is supposed to work it started me wondering if it could help with RBD. On some quick research it sounds like it, along with a couple of others have been suggested based on limited data, but no extensive studies have been done.

Alternatives to Clonazepam in REM Behavior Disorder Treatment

From what I can see from studies done it is not conclusive that it works on lower back pain, but my doctor thought it was worth trying.

Irbesartan is an ARB class blood pressure drug. My understanding is that it is a second choice drug used if an ACE inhibitor type like ramipril or perindopril cause side effects like a dry cough. The ACE inhibitor is preferred but sometimes not tolerated.

As I mentioned before I would ask the doctor about adding a diuretic (water pill) like indapamide as a replacement for the furosemide that you have discontinued. It should help with blood pressure as well as reduce fluid retention. At least in Canada it is a very low cost generic drug.

And for sure ask the doctor about taking the potassium. These diuretic pills can upset the electrolyte balance and too much or too little of sodium or potassium can be a significant problem. I would ask for a test to see where you stand for electrolyte balance.

That start pressure would likely feel very suffocating. The next thing you need to know is the minimum pressure. The ramp takes the pressure up to the minimum pressure over the ramp time that is set. If you press the round button when it is running and ramping up it may display that. The other way is to go into the Clinical Menu and check what the settings are. If you do that, you have to be careful not to change anything that you don't want to change. You do that by holding the Home key and Round button down at the same time for 5 seconds.

However, the best thing you could do if you want to get into the details of how the machine is set up is to download a freeware program called OSCAR. That lets you look at the detailed data captured on the SD card every time you run the machine. It can be displayed so you know exactly what is going one each night. It also displays current settings. It requires a PC or Mac and a SD card reader. The SD card is located on the left side of the machine behind a small door.

Another option is to go through the Clinical Manual for the machine. It tells you what all the options are. There are kind of two ways to go with this. You can use OSCAR to figure out what is going on, and then change the settings yourself. Or, you can use that knowledge to ask the sleep clinic tech to change them. If your clinic is cooperative then that is the best way to go. For something simple like changing the ramp start pressure I could tell you how to do that. That would be the first thing I would try to make it more comfortable.

The best starting point would be to look at the data with OSCAR and determine what is going on when your wife feels like she is not getting enough air, and what is going on when other issues occur during the night. OSCAR will also give you some idea whether or not the pressures are set too low or too high. You can post a daily report screen here to get comments.

An AirCurve 10 is a BiLevel machine that is more complex and capable of higher pressures. Higher pressures and a full face mask tend to be more uncomfortable, and a full face mask also tends to leak at higher pressures which can be very annoying.

One common issue with feeling like you can't get enough air to breathe is that the initial pressure is too low. If she is using a ramp up in pressure you can adjust the ramp start pressure. By default the pressure can be as low as 4 cm and that makes me feel like I am suffocating. I think it should be at least 7 cm. I have my machine set at 9 cm for the ramp start.

Can you figure out if a ramp is being used and what pressure it is starting at? The machine should display this pressure when it first starts.

Yes, that is really severe sleep apnea with an AHI of 120, and it really needs to be treated. There are a few things that can impact comfort and acceptance of the CPAP.

First is the mask used. There are many different types and manufacturers. Which masks has she tried and what does she not like about each one? I may be able to suggest some alternatives.

The second is the adjustment of the machine for comfort. What brand and model of a CPAP is she using. Do you know what the pressure settings are? What are her main complaints about using the machine? I may be able to suggest some improvements in the setup of the machine.

This may or may not be relevant, but let me tell two stories.

We have a trailer and sometimes camp off the grid. For that purpose I bought two 12 Volt DC to 24 Volt DC inverters made by ResMed - one for my wife's S9 and one for my A10. My inverter worked fine but my wife's didn't. After returning the inverter three times I did some electrical measurements to see what was going on. I essentially measured the current draw as my wife's inverter was tripping out on overload shortly after the machine started up. What I found out was that both my machine and my wife's machine with both the humidifier and heated hose were drawing the same current. And, more interesting the current was switching on and off. It seems the heated hose, or humidifier, or both do not used a modulated current draw. It is simply switching on and off to control temperature and humidity. The short story is that the current draw is very uneven, and I am convinced that there is a design error in the inverter made for the S9, but the A10 is fine. Relevant to your problem however is that even though I never felt the heated hose as warm, it certainly was drawing current, as was my wife's S9. And the other point is that it is not constantly on. It seems to cycle on and off.

Since that time the heated hose for my A10 basically failed at the mask end. The flexible rubber connector seemed to overheat and turn gooey. I replaced the hose and it is fine now. But the point again was that the hose appeared to be passing current. I suspect there was a bad connection inside the mask end connector that was causing the connecter fitting to get warm or hot, but I never noticed it. And this new hose is the same as the old in that I never feel the hose itself getting warm. But. I leave the temperature at 81 F (27 C), and never adjust it higher or lower.

This all said it is very hard to check to see if the hose is working if you only have a home 110 volt version of the power supply. I was only able to do it in my trailer setup because I could measure the current going to the inverter as the wires are exposed on the 12 volt side.

What blood pressure medications are you taking other than furosemide?