7L/minute leak

[Gaspnea]

Hi all. According to my machine's data, I had a 7 liter/minute leak last night. My pressure is 11 so how does this translate? Is that a bad leak? I feel stupid as I am still trying to figure out my way around this machine's readouts and data retrieval procedure so now I'm wondering how many other nights I've had bad leaks.

[jdireton]

Gasp,

Resmed report the unintentional leakage, in other words the leakage in excess of what is expected through the purge ports on your mask. Resmed indicates that anything less than 24 l/min is acceptable, or more accurately, anything greater than 24 l/min is a problem. At leakage above this 24 l/min rate, your therapy may be compromised and the data your machine reports may not be accurate.

Long way of saying 7 l/min is great!

[trish6hundred]

Hi Gaspnea, Please don't feel stupid about what you don't know, none of us can know everything. The fact that you are willing to learn will take you a long way so don't sweat the small stuff, just keep on trying.

[lonnieb]

Gaspnea Wrote:
Hi all. According to my machine's data, I had a 7 liter/minute leak last night. My pressure is 11 so how does this translate? Is that a bad leak? I feel stupid as I am still trying to figure out my way around this machine's readouts and data retrieval procedure so now I'm wondering how many other nights I've had bad leaks.


Hi Gaspnea
7 liter/minute is not a bad leak mine is different each night but is more than 7 most of the time.

[zonk]

the S9 subtract the expected mask vents leak (about 32 L/min for nasal mask at pressure 11) from total leak and display 95% percentile leak which is mask plus mouth leak. in this case its 7 L/min ... excellent
it means leak been AT and BELOW 7 L/min for 95% of the time and higher for the other 5%
to dig deeper ... you need to look at the resscan leak graph and see whats going on

[Sleepster]

Hi all. According to my machine's data, I had a 7 liter/minute leak last night. My pressure is 11 so how does this translate?

That's a very good leak rate. Nothing to worry about. I think anything less than 35 L/min is acceptable for your machine.

[zonk]

Hi all. According to my machine's data, I had a 7 liter/minute leak last night. My pressure is 11 so how does this translate?

That's a very good leak rate. Nothing to worry about. I think anything less than 35 L/min is acceptable for your machine.

maybe for system one machines but its not acceptable for an S9
S9 acceptable leak anything less than L/min

[b360155]

Gasp,

Resmed report the unintentional leakage, in other words the leakage in excess of what is expected through the purge ports on your mask. Resmed indicates that anything less than 24 l/min is acceptable, or more accurately, anything greater than 24 l/min is a problem. At leakage above this 24 l/min rate, your therapy may be compromised and the data your machine reports may not be accurate.

Long way of saying 7 l/min is great!

Agree with jdireton. There is no correlation in data results for leak rate and pressure setting. With Resmed anything under 24.0 l/min unintentional leak rate is acceptable. Even if you have an occasional spike above 24.0 l/min if you're viewing your results on ResScan or Sleepyhead software graphs is OK as long as you're not spending prolonged periods of time above the 24.0 l/min line. The lower the better, but 7 is a very good score. Don't obsess about getting to 0.0 leak rate. I get there on some nights and most nights I'm in the single digits. The most important thing provided you're under the 24.0 l/min line is that you're getting a good night's sleep.

[Gaspnea]

Thank you to all of you for this great information! I suppose it would help if I'd read the owner's manual for the machine but I don't seem to have one. I am still in the process of finding out whether they have unscrupulously given me a used machine. I suspect they have since...where is the manual?

[jdireton]

Gasp,

You can download the Owners Manual from the Resmed web site. If you want to take it a step further, look in the Private Files and Lnks section of this forum for instructions on requested the Clinician Manual. The Clinician Manual has instructions on how to adjust basically every aspect of the machine performance. I'd also recommend that you look into downloading the ResScan software. Instructions on how to do that can be found in the same place.

As far as having a used machine, it's very common. In the information screen of your machine should be a total hours number. This number cannot be reset. If it doesn't make sense, challenge your DME strongly. If you paid for new, get new. If you're renting under insurance, they may say you have to use the used machine. In that case check with your insurance and make sure you get a "new" machine when the rental period is over. Let us know how this goes. We can give you some advice on how to "persuade" DME's that has worked for others.