Sierra

The best way is to download OSCAR and display the results on your SD card providing you have either an Elite CPAP or AutoSet model. The very basic CPAP does not record this data. You will need a SD card reader and PC or Mac to use the software. I like to look at the Overview tab to see the events for each day. You can get a good idea from that how many of each type of event you are having each day. Here is an example. See the top bar chart. Magenta are CA events, light blue is OA, and dark blue are hypopnea events. You can also see how erratic the event frequency is. I go in stretches where CA's are close to zero, and then times when they exceed 1. My long term total AHI now is 0.8, with about .25 of that OA's and 0.5 CA.

I suffer from central apnea and the strategy I use is to set the machine to the fixed pressure CPAP mode, and use the lowest pressure possible, that still prevents most of the obstructive events. What you could try is stepping down the pressure 1 cm and try it for a week to see if CA's go down and OA's do not come up to much. I would suggest no less than a week at a pressure to see what it really achieves. I find central apnea to be erratic from night to night.

On the screen format, I would also suggest turning off the pie chart display. It adds no useful information and takes up screen space. Just go to File, Preferences, Appearance, and UNCHECK the box called "Show Event Breakdown Pie Chart". This will allow more to be displayed on the left. Some missing information now are the "sessions" near the bottom this is helpful in determining if you are missing part of the night.

From what I can see it appears your start pressure is still set at 10 cm. That part is missing too under the Machine Settings, as it is cut off. That flat red section of the Pressure chart indicates your start pressure on the graph.

Having the mask type set on Pillows instead of full face could make the leaks look worse. A pillows mask has a lower purge flow than a full face. Yes, you should have it set at Full Face.

On humidity, I have a heated hose, and have my humidity control set on Auto. It takes over 9 hours to use up all the water.

Actually there are more details when you suppress the full month calendar. You of course can see them by scrolling up and down, but when you do a screen shot all I can see is what is in the screen shot, and nothing more. I can't scroll a screen shot. In any case I can see more now. I was curious to see if you still had EPR turned on and what it is set at. I see it is full time and at 3 cm. That is good.

The only easy change I can see is to increase the Ramp Start pressure. It now appears to be set at 10 cm. You could increase it up to your minimum pressure of 12 cm. That initial set of hypopnea events occurred while pressure was ramping up. You may avoid some events by starting the pressure at a higher value.

I have a F20 mask and gave up on it. I could not make it seal well. So I can't really give you any advice. Some have used a cloth mask liner called RemZzzs. Others make their own using t-shirt material. They claim it stops leaks....

The difference between mask pressure and just pressure is that the mask pressure is measured and fluctuates as the actual mask pressure fluctuates. The other pressure is just the set pressure that the machine is trying to achieve. It is very steady as it is just the pressure that the machine wants, not what it actually is.

Most of your AHI is from hypopnea which occurred right after you went to sleep. It would be helpful to click on that triangle beside the date to suppress the full month calendar. That will expose more detailed data on the left. Also it is helpful to show the Pressure and Mask pressure graphs. There is no need for the Respiration Rate and Minute Volume.

The Flow Limitation is ideally zero. It is a measure of the air flow resistance. Your numbers are higher than expected for parts of the night.

Your leaks are too frequent. What mask are you using? What have you tried to reduce leakage? As I have said before the machine will not report events during the gray Large Leak periods of time. You have to expand the scale and look for them manually. Use the up down and left right arrow keys to expand the scale during the grayed out periods.

That period of time around 23:30 appears to be when the machine is off.

When new users require higher pressure swallowing air can be an issue. It takes some time to get used to. However, it does suggest you need a CPAP if pressure is going that high. . I recommend using the AutoRamp feature with a fairly high Ramp Start pressure. I use 9 cm. The machine defaults to 4 cm which I find suffocating. The AutoRamp is not really a ramp. It just holds the pressure at a fixed number until you fall asleep. Just pick a comfortable number for going to sleep. When you get up in the night, it will do the AutoRamp over again when you put the mask back on.

If you want help with OSCAR just post a typical Daily Report screen. On a PC jus press F12 and take note in the bottom right corner of the screen where the screenshot is saved. Use File Explorer to find the saved file, left click on it, and drag it into a message you are composing.

I don't use MyAir but I have heard of issues when the machine is bought out of the country and then used where the cell data service is not the same. If you go deep into the settings, there is a place where the cell service provider is displayed. You may want to contact your provider of the machine for advice on how it should be set.

This has every indication that the CPAP machine was totally off during those time periods. When it comes back on again you can see that the pressure is in the AutoRamp mode and is held constant until you fall asleep (or at least the machine thinks you are asleep). This also indicates the machine has been off and the AutoRamp starts again when the machine comes back on. Just before the second off period you can see a high leak rate spike which suggests the mask has come off or the hose disconnected. Do you ever wake up with the mask off, or hose disconnected?

You may want to check your electrical connections to see if any of them are loose. Your first event does not show a high flow. It just goes off. If you zoom in on it you could see if there is any indication of a flow spike

A. The apnea periods are obvious from the flow graph. Zero flow for 10+ seconds is an apnea. If you expand the scale out you should be able to see if the zero flow lasts 10 seconds or not. B. Flow Limitations are not the same as the flow rate graph. This is just an indication where Resmed thinks the flow is being limited but not stopped. To export a graph just press F12 and take note in the bottom right of the screen where the screenshot is saved. Use File Explorer to find the saved screenshot, and left click on it, and drag it into a message here. C. The Pressure graph is the set inhale pressure that the machine wants to use. The Mask Pressure is the actual pressure at the mask estimated by the machine. It moves up and down with each breath if you have EPR turned on.

I am quite sure that ResMed suppresses the reporting of apnea events during the grayed out high leakage segments of the night. I recall they justify this by saying they can't accurately distinguish between the types of apnea, so their "solution" is to not report it at all. However you can still see the flow rate and mask pressure displayed during the grayed out period. If you zoom in on the grayed out sections of the night you can see enough detail to manually identify any apnea events. You probably can't determine the type, but you should easily see if there are any stoppages in flow for 10 seconds or more -- that is an apnea. I went back and found a night where I had some high leakage periods. Right at the beginning before the high leakage started there was a flagged obstructive event. This clearly shows what an apnea event looks like. Flow stops, and if you are using EPR the pressure cycling stops as well. If you look through your high leakage areas you will see if you are having any events that look like this. I looked through mine, and found none. Here is the screenshot with the scale expanded to see the apnea event detail. Hope that helps some,