After my first 5 months on CPAP the doctor wanted me to spend a night in a sleep lab, which I did. Up to this point, all communication with the doctor and the CPAP clinician has been by phone. My upcoming phone appointment with the doctor will be over a month after the sleep study. I am in BC Canada and wondering if it would be appropriate for me to request the data from the sleep study while waiting to speak to the doctor?
Yes, for sure you should ask for the report. You will need that along with a doctor's prescription (could be your GP) if you want to buy a CPAP at an on line store. I recall there is a Canadian supreme court decision that determined medical information rightfully belongs to the patient, not the doctor or medical system. They may ask you to put the request in writing and ask you to pay for the cost of making a copy of it. I never paid for my copy though in Alberta and they just handed me a copy. I bought my CPAP on line for 1/3 the price that the sleep clinic wanted for it.
You may get as much or more information about how you are doing by downloading a free software CPAP data viewing program called OSCAR. It will display very detailed graphs on what is happening from second to second during the night. It is the best indication of how well your CPAP is working for you, and if anything can be improved.
Thanks! I already have the prescription and own my own CPAP machine. I just need to get an SD card and will check out Oscar. I just now discovered this forum and learned about Oscar.
What kind of machine do you have? If it is a ResMed or Dreamstation the SD card should already be in the machine and may have 5 months of data on it, depending on the machine.
It is a Resmed Airsense 10 Autoset but not brand new (had 160 hours on it when I got it) and came without a card.