saja

I just had a home sleep study done and I'm really confused about the results. Two years ago several family members noticed i quit breathing in my sleep and so I went to my primary care physician. Who ordered an oximetry test at home. I had two tests done, both showed my oxygen levels down to 80%. So my dr. Referred me for a home sleep study study. I just got my results. The sleep doctor said I snore like a beast. Which is not new to me.I've been snoring since i was a kid. And i Told the sleep doctor that i wasn't very surprised it didn't show any apnea since despite being hooked up to all the wires i actually had a very rare good night's sleep and he said i did have apnea episodes about 7an hour. But that everyone has apneatic episodes and mine was normal. Could my results be because i had a good night's sleep. The only thing the sleep doctor suggested is to help my snoring to lose weight since I'm about 20-25 lbs overweight.

an AHI of 7 is a gray area, and depending on other factors in the sleep study, such as high concentration of events during REM, or sub-apneac results (RERA) also depending on other factors such as heart arrhythmia or high BP can be considered clinically significant or not.

A night in which you slept well is weirdly a better indicator of whether or not your problems are apnea related --- if you had slept poorly, your sleep may not have gotten deep enough to see whther apnea is present during deep sleep or not.

Another factor would be exactly what type of home sleep study was done. There is a big difference between hst and full in lab attended studies. Psg

Only your own doctors who know your whole history and have seen you should make treatment suggestions.

Given witnessed apnea and the low overnight oximetry results I would be asking if a full in lab psg might be appropriate even with the marginal ahi 7 hst.

Then again I drive truck for a living. This advice might be worth exactly what you paid for it.

OP, home sleep studies may sometimes underestimate the severity of sleep apnea. Sometimes when people have significant symptoms such as daytime sleepiness or excessive fatigue, or additional disorders such as diabetes or uncontrolled high blood pressure, they may be a candidate for an in-lab sleep study despite borderline (or negative) home sleep study results. Again, as truckerdad57 said, someone who is well versed with your medical history and your sleep symptoms can best help formulate the plan for management of your sleep issues.

Of course, one of the primary aims of the forums here is to develop research questions. The question here being how do the people with a high pre-test probability of sleep apnea do after a negative home sleep study, when followed with just sleep hygiene and weight loss advice versus having an in-lab study and formulating a management plan based on those results. Some studies have looked at this, but more work needs to be done.

Agree with you Rohit. If we had 50,000 users and someone like Daria Vader compared herself with others who were boarderline on home studies a lot of questions would emerge because some would have good outcomes and some not. Researchers could look at that information and formulate many questions. At this site it's all about the "patient". If the patient's needs haven't been met then it's not a good outcome and questions need to be asked. If we had 50,000 users that the researchers asked questions, their answers would become very influential to drive better protocols based on that information. How exciting is that!