should I raise my CPAP pressure if 3AM spo2 is loow

[RichardW]

My Garmin Vivoactive 5 monitors overnight SPo2 and reports it as low. Typically, 90%, sometimes 80%.
I have a Resmed 10. The pressure is set to 9.8 with a 5 minute ramp. 
My AHI is usually around 3.
Most days I feel tired when I wake up.

Should I change the pressure?

[OpalRose]

Yes, you could do that, but.... there should be a definite reason for doing so.

What sort of apneas are you experiencing? If Central, raising pressure could make it worse.

Download OSCAR and show us a couple charts for review.

[RichardW]

OpalRose,
I have Oscar, I created a screen shot of last night and saved it as a file
I added the Garmin watch spo2 from last night.

[staceyburke]

Welcome to the board.  I would suggest 2 changes and see how your nights sleep is.,

You have EPR set full time (don't change)  EPE = 1   Change to 3

Change your min to 7  Those changes should help with the sleep disruption.

[RichardW]

       

Stacey Burke,
Thanks. I made the changes you suggested, and I am sleeping better. AHI now about 0.1. Fewer wake ups.
But Garmin still says SPO2 is low. Minimum is about 88% around 7 AM.

Do you have any suggestions to improve over night SPO2?

Do you need to see more of the Oscar report.

[Dormeo]

You are spending a fair amount of time below 90, if I'm reading the output right. I'd suggest consulting your doctor and showing him or her the data. The next step might be to use a monitoring device issued by your MD. Possibly he or she will want you to use some supplementary O2 during the night. (Of course it'd also be good to see what your O2 levels are doing during the day.)

On a different subject: I see 5 breaks in therapy here. What causes them?

[RichardW]

Dormeo,
I typically wake up every 2 hours or so during the night.

[SarcasticDave94]

If you're dealing with low oxygen levels during sleep, you will want doc to know. Maybe you need to ask for a Cap Ox overnight home test to give evidence. You may need to use supplemental oxygen overnight, adding it into the CPAP hose.

The statistic for supplemental oxygen is at or less than 88% SpO2 for 5 minutes.

Again though first thing, contact doc.

[Dormeo]

I wake up a lot myself, but I don't stop the machine. You might consider leaving it on and staying masked up.

I do hope you'll see your doctor about the O2 levels. If supplemental O2 is needed, it's a simple matter to bleed it into your CPAP, and people get excellent results from using it.

[BigWing]

AHI now about 0.1. Fewer wake ups.
But Garmin still says SPO2 is low.

Do you have any suggestions to improve over night SPO2?

I too bought an oximeter to see what exactly these events were doing to my oxygen. After all, that's one of the main reasons we put up with the PAP treatment, isn't it - because the events cause oxygen desaturation and that's bad for us?

Yet, like you, I am not really seeing any obvious correlation between PAP-marked events and oxygen drops. My events are close to zero every night but my oxygen 'score' varies for no obvious reason from great to poor....from night to night and indeed hour to hour.

The main correlation I am seeing is between oxygen changes and arousals. In other words, most of the noticeable changes in my SpO2 graph coincide with an arousal (usually, but not always, without awakening). I guess that suggests some sort of positional obstruction is going on, though I'd expect that to affect what the CPAP machine sees in terms of flow restrictions and events - yet I don't think it does.

I have now added a camera to my overnight arsenal, to see if that might show me exactly what is triggering the oxygen drops. I only started using it last night, and there is still a lot of room for improvement of how exactly it does its job, but it already finally confirmed one thing for me. The frequent few-second 'blips' I see in the Flow Rate graph which are accompanied by a brief jump in the Movement chart and then a Pulse Rate spike are indeed arousals, as they coincide precisely with me briefly shifting position.

So I'd now like to figure out (a) what causes the arousals and (b) what is really affecting my desat level.