AHI Help

Hi everyone,

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea over ten years ago. I am tall and relatively thin and my jaw recedes a bit. I suspect I have had apnea my whole life (slept through class/driving) and CPAP seems to help. I was doing routine titration studies but my pressure number was always around 10 each time. I realized you can put the machines on auto adjust with a floor and ceiling value, so I’ve been doing this for many years, without sleep studies— mainly because of the cost (my insurance is horrible as I am self employed). The machine averages the same pressure around 10 cm2 and I put the floor and cieling at 8 and 16 respectively.

Okay, that’s the back story, here’s my question. My AHI averages around 7 most days, 6 on good days and 8 plus on bad days (11 one night recently!). I have experimented with using my mouthpiece simultaneously with my CPAP and I don’t see a pattern of making it worse or better.

Any thoughts on how bad this AHI is with CPAP treatment - should I get another (what feels like a useless) titration study?

Can one determine how bad their baseline apnea is (without treatment) by looking at their AHI with treatment? Thoughts with my numbers?

Thanks.

I was told that an AHI under 5 is considered successful treatment, so it sounds like you could be doing better.

Have you ever asked your doctor about your AHI? Maybe there are adjustments they can try without doing another titration study.

You AHI is only very slightly elevated. Normally we would say that if your last sleep study suggested that treatment is doing its job, you feel OK and other medical indicators are OK (blood pressure for example) then you probably don't need to worry. Nothing much seems to have changed since your last titration study, so if that was OK you should be OK.