Top Topics
If you had a sleep study to ascertain your pressure then it should be correct. However, some settings on your machine may have an effect here. What are your ramp settings like? Also, do you have an auto CPAP? If so, there will often be more air when you wake up because the machine has turned itself up to treat your OSA. Stopping it and starting it again is the right move in that case. Mask leak will also cause your machine to blow more - this is called leak compensation.
How many central apnoeas are you having?
CPAP and BiPAP, while related, work quite differently and are not freely interchangeable. If you do need BiPAP it really should involve another sleep study for it to be set properly.
Yes, as long as it looks like water and not like soup. It should be fine.
Hi Cdowis
If your doctor wants you to have another, monitored sleep study then you should probably do just that. It would seem to make sense in this case. CPAP Although reducing your AHI from 38 to 19 is halving it, 19 is still too high. Put simply, it means that you are still stopping breathing every 3 minutes. That's not cool. Now ordinary CPAP is not treating it and they need to know why. It could be that there is something else besides OSA which is creating a false high AHI reading - restless legs for example. The only was to determine this is with a formal sleep study.
When it comes to BiPAP, you cannot just buy one, turn it on and expect it to work. It is a far more complex piece of equipment and needs to be set specifically for every person. It is used for treating more complicated problems that OSA, such as central sleep apnoea, obesity hypoventilation syndrome, type 2 respiratory failure and so on. Where CPAP has just the 1 setting, which is pressure, BiPAP involves many parameters involving not just 2 different pressures but breath timings and other things. It can only be properly set for long term use in a sleep study.
It may be that you just have OSA and something is fooling the APAP, in which case you will need a study to reveal and determine appropriate treatment. It may be that you have central sleep apnoea instead or as well, in which case you will need a sleep study to treat it with BiPAP or ASV. Either way, I don't think you can get out of another study.
Oh, and your doctor cannot use data from a study of your normal sleep to determine the settings for your treatment. He can use it to make a diagnosis but that's all.
Hi Trebor,
How the air comes out of the exhalation port depends a bit on the individual mask. Most Fisher & Paykel nasal masks have a diffuser over the exhalation port which make it virtually silent. This would be the HC405, HC406, HC407, Eson and Eson 2 if you want to look them up. Their full face mask does not. The quietest, least blowy full face masks are probably the ResMed Quatto Air, AirFit F10 and AirFit F20. The don't direct the air straight out but have a circular pattern that is more diffuse. They may help you.
Most masks are not that noisy though. Is it possible that a leak is causing the noise? When it is being noise, press around the outside of your mask. If the air gets quieter when you press in a particular spot then you probably have a leak there. The mask will also be noisy if not correctly assembled. Some models have pieces which can be almost-but-not-quite clicked together which will result in a noisy leak. Lastly, if you hear a lot of noise as you breathe in and out, this normally only happens when you are awake and breathing deeply. As you fall asleep and your breathing becomes more relaxed this noise usually disappears.
Which mask do you have?
Howdy Snuffie
I was not suggesting that you wear CPAP in bed while reading a book or watching TV, but in your living room or wherever else you might normally do these things (besides your bed). It should not have any significant effect on your sleep hygiene. The idea of not reading or watching TV in bed is related to classical conditioning. If the only thing you do in bed is sleep, then your brain learns to connect lying in bed with sleep. Over time your brain will probably become conditioned to connect CPAP with sleep, but at this early stage it is more important to just get used to it. It won't connect CPAP with sleep if you're not sleeping with it. The using CPAP during the day while relaxing thing works well for some people.
Thanks for your success story. It's human nature to ignore success and highlight problems (there's a name for it in psychology but I forget what). It's nice to be reminded that for the majority of users CPAP is a successful and useful therapy. Of course, those people rarely come online looking for advice coz they don't need it. Just last night we had 3 patients happily treated with CPAP. They are all fans.
I wholeheartedly concur. If the inositol works, then great! You have nothing to lose. And if it isn't doing the job fully it's important to know. You may not even have OSA to stay with, and your symptoms may be due to something else.
Is the dodgy switch on top of the unit or on the back where the power cord connects? Either way, a number of my patients tackle this problem by leaving the machine on and turning it on & off at the wall. If this is too hard, you could get a power cord with a normal rocker switch built into it. They are fairly common for bedside lamps. You could probably get one spliced into the power cord you already have. That would let you keep using your beloved machine.
Why can't you just use the one machine for the required period?
