Sierra

The ResMed website currently indicates that the AirSense 11 is only available at select sites in the US. Somewhere else I have seen that they only plan to sell them through sleep clinics and not through on line sites. Not sure what province you are in, but there is a bit of a sleep clinic vs on line CPAP store game that is played here. It varies from province to province, but in Alberta the common way of getting a CPAP is to be prescribed a sleep clinic trial. There are many clinics that offer them for free if they are prescribed by a doctor. They give you an at home sleep study machine to use overnight. You bring it back to them in the morning and they read the data off the machine and have it analyzed. A sleep clinic doctor in some unknown location reads it and diagnoses the apnea. This is provided to your doctor and if they agree, then a machine is prescribed. Most of these clinics will then give you a trial machine to use for a couple of weeks, again for free. If it works then they offer to sell it to you for about $2500. If your insurance pays for it, then I guess that is no big deal. But if it doesn't then there are alternatives to buy the machine from any number of different on line outlets for much less. When I got to this point I bought a AirSense 10 machine/mask kit for about $900 on line. For a long time machines surprisingly were selling in Canada for much less than in the US. ResMed has changed their pricing policy now and force retailers to meet a minimum selling price which I believe now for the AirSense 10 kit is $1270 or so.

The details vary by province and I believe Ontario actually pays for part of the machine but also requires an in lab sleep study instead of an at home version. In any case it pays to be aware of these issues if you get to the point of having a study done, trialing a machine, and then buying one.

I have exchanged emails with those who control this forum and it is conscious decision. They have decided for reasons I really do not understand to not notify anyone by email when posts to their thread come in. Seems to me it is better to let each individual decide whether or not they want to be notified. That way those new to the form or making starting their first thread would be notified until they decide to unsubscribe.

I believe the graph is an attempt to tell you when you are having AHI events. the graph seems to go up and then over time return to normal if you are not having any further events. It makes more sense when you are having more events. I do not find it useful and just move it down on the screen so it is out of sight. What I go by are the events flags bar which is normally pinned to the top of the daily report. This shows you when each event is happening. It is quite easy to visualize when events are happening and what type they are. My normal pattern is to have fewer events early in my sleep and then incur more as I approach the time when I get up. I use that as a bit of a reminder that I may be attempting to sleep too long. Some call the events which occur when we are half awake as "sleep wake junk". In general I find my overall AHI is lower if I sleep closer to 7 hours, and not try to stretch it to 8 or 9 hours.

I have had that feeling with a F&P SleepStyle machine, but not with my current ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet. I don't believe that the ResMed uses timing to decide when to switch from the exhale pressure to the inhale pressure. It does it based on flow. It senses when you want to inhale and then switches. There is no timing adjustment to be made in the APAP machine. There are settings in the BiLevel AirCurve machines which do attempt to "force breaths", but not in the AirSense 10.

How is your machine set up now? In APAP mode? Min Pressure, Max Pressure? Is EPR turned on? What is it set at? Are you using AutoRamp, and what is the Start Pressure set at? If you can say how it is set up now, there may be some things that could be adjusted to make it more comfortable going to sleep.

From what I can see your settings are a minimum of 6 cm inhale and 16 cm maximum. The A-Flex is set at 3 cm, so the machine is varying the inhale pressure during the night from as low as 6 cm to as much as 16 cm. The exhale will be set by the A-Flex at 3 cm lower than inhale and goes up and down as the inhale goes up and down. The AirCurve can be set to do this.

Mode: VAuto Max IPAP: 16 cm Min EPAP: 6 cm Pressure Support (PS): 3 cm

The question I have is that your AHI is not all that good, and I wonder if a BiPAP is the best machine for you. In fact the settings you have could be achieved by a standard APAP like the AirSense 10 AutoSet. What is your breakdown of the AHI into CA, OA, and Hypopnea events? Have you considered downloading OSCAR and looking at your data to see more detail on what is happening? Sometimes when CA (central apnea) is an issue a BiLevel is prescribed when it may not be the best solution.

I think the biggest issue is that posters do not get any email to remind them that there is a response to their question, and then they never come back. I suggested that to those that manage the site, and I guess they are not willing to do it. The second issue is that new posters post images and they seem to go into purgatory for days, and may or may not appear at a later date. I guess it has to do with the spam filter they used. There was a recent post on ASV machines and I put a lot of effort into it, and there was a few posts, and now it has disappeared completely...

If you end up with a CPAP that supports OSCAR you will be able to look at the breathing flow in amazing detail (breath by breath) and see what is going on. May not be an obvious solution but you will see how you are breathing and when you stop. I recommend the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet machines, and they are compatible with OSCAR. I think some select clinics are selling the AirSense 11 machines, but I don't know if they are supported by OSCAR.

No, I have never experienced that.

I believe that is what the AirSense Mini uses? I think it just recycles the moisture in the exhaled air back to the inhaled air somehow. I have no experience with it.

All I can say is that the heated hose and Auto mode on my ResMed Airsense works well. It does seem to have a limit of about 9.5 hours before a full tank goes dry. We live in an area with fairly dry air. Is it possible you are having high leakage. I would imagine that would put extra demand on the water to humidify the air that is leaking out.