5 years on cpap, no improvement. getting desperate for some help.

[sheepless]

keep it in the back of your mind if pap settings don't work it out. the screenshot looks fairly periodic & is similar to my plm pattern, which I've also seen in the charts of others with plm. are you tired during the day? do you wake up more than occasionally for no obvious reason during the night?

[kc210]

keep it in the back of your mind if pap settings don't work it out. the screenshot looks fairly periodic & is similar to my plm pattern, which I've also seen in the charts of others with plm. are you tired during the day? do you wake up more than occasionally for no obvious reason during the night?

yes to both. actually one of my main issues was waking up about 3-4 hours in and then throwing the mask off to go back to sleep. i noticed i had bad dry mouth so added xylimelt and that has improved that, but it happened again last night about 4 hours in, and data wise the best night i've had, i managed to stick with it and go back to sleep with the mask for the first time ever but it's still weird just waking up like that. without the cpap it wouldn't happen to me.

did you do anything to improve it?

[sheepless]

not enough improvement but meds reduce plm & I cap max ipap because the machines (resmed; idk about other brands) ineffectively increase pressure against the flow limited breaths between spikey inhales triggered by movements. that's my theory anyway. I continue to wake far too often, which I attribute to residual plm & associated flow limitations & leaks. obviously, fatigue & fragmented sleep aren't definitive and can be caused by many things but there's enough in your chart & description to be suspicious of plm despite not showing up in your sleep test. btw, it's useful to know if plm isn't itemized vs reported to be zero. if you haven't already, dig deep beyond the summary they usually provide us. summaries often omit important info. also, plm can be quite inconsistent so it's possible that it isn't picked up on the night of the test. otoh, it might not be plm at all. reports from witnesses & audio & video recordings are the primary means I know of for identifying plm at home. a few savvy folks have used accelerometers & the like too. there have been recent posts about that.

[kc210]

well ive got the resmed autoset and after a week of using it same issue. waking up around 4 hours. doc even gave me extended release ambien to try this time. no change. i want to use this thing all night so bad but i'm out of ideas. i even solved any dry mouth with the xylimelts and the new machines humidity.

[Crimson Nape]

Please post a daily screenshot of OSCAR (F12).

[kc210]

it's actually pretty interesting, with the new machine my ahi is lower, and my pressure is staying lower. there are some leaks every night, machine is giving me a good mask seal rating, i assume it's where i press my face into the pillow.

[SarcasticDave94]

I would nix the 45 minute Ramp at 5 cmH20. That's 45 minutes of no therapy.

[kc210]

I would nix the 45 minute Ramp at 5 cmH20. That's 45 minutes of no therapy.

will do. actually makes me wonder about the settings in general, when i got it was set to slimline tubing but i had a regular heated tube so it was blowing my face off, thankfully i had a slim laying around.

[SarcasticDave94]

I think it should have a tube setting somewhere. It should also auto detect heated tubes as I recall.

[staceyburke]

Your flow limits are high when you have mask leaks. That can cause waking you up. So fixing leaks is a good thing to work on.