(10-13-2019, 08:27 PM)guiniviere Wrote: It is interesting that you also have just changed from the Dreamstation to the ResMed fo Her. If you don't mind my asking, what was your reason? For myself, I simply thought that if it was designed specifically for women then it ought to be better. I 'm not convinced and I really dislike the childish smiles and the scoring in myAir.
Fred has largely covered it, but from my perspective:
- By responding more quickly to the airway closing, the Resmed does not need to raise the pressure as much. The Dreamstation was slow to respond but would actually go higher and stay there longer. This disturbed my sleep and sometimes caused Central Apnea.
- Resmed does a better job of adjusting to my ever-changing sinus congestion, changes in sleeping position, etc.
- If I have any congestion at all, the Dreamstation Flex doesn’t seem to last long enough. I have trouble getting enough air out before I need to take the next breath, so I feel air-starved. Resmed EPR is capable of reducing the pressure more and keeping it reduced longer. Dreamstation Flex 3 reduces the pressure 1.5~2 at most, and it only goes that low for a moment.
- Breathing just feels more natural to me with EPR.
- I may wake less often with the Resmed, but more importantly, I go right back to sleep. With the Dreamstation, I had a hard time getting back to sleep every time I woke up.
I don’t use myAir, and found DreamMapper to be fairly useless too. It’s main purpose is compliance monitoring, like MyAir.
You can enable more detailed info on the Resmed by setting Essentials to Plus in the Clinician menu. With that enabled, you’ll see AHI (apnea hypopnea index), AI (apnea index), and the Central Apnea index. You can view these averaged for the day, week, or month.
The Dreamstation does have one feature the Resmed does not. Opti-Start will start your pressure at the 90% level from the previous session. This does make the excessively wide defaults easier to live with, but it also assumes your needs will be the same from night to night. Mine certainly aren’t.
My Rx pressure was 13. This is actually pretty close - IF my sinuses are clear, I stay on my side all night, and I’m using a pillows mask.
With the Dreamstation and Resmed both set to 13-16, and their pressure relief on their maximum settings, Resmed keeps the pressure in a tighter range, provides more relief while exhaling, and disturbs my sleep less.
While it’s tough to make an apples-to-apples comparison, my AHI has generally been lower with Resmed - including one night that was 0.0.