Any help you can provide

[JazzyJess]

Hi everyone,

I have suffered from sleep problems for most of my life. I have really bad healthcare insurance and haven’t had any luck getting answers from doctors. I have taken an at home sleep study but I don’t think I slept at all and the results were inconclusive. I have plans to do a clinical sleep study once all this Covid stuff has passed. I ended up doing a lot of research on my own and think I may suffer from UARS or some other obstruction when I sleep, my dentist has told me it is a possibility. Along with prescribed sleep medication I was able to sleep semi-regularly for several months, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping again lately.  I was able to borrow a CPAP from a friend and have been using it for awhile now and it seems to help. I was hoping someone could take a look at the screen shots of the data from the Oscar App and let me know what they think is going on when I sleep. The data is from a night where I slept decently and hopefully represents what is wrong. My friend helped me set it up so that the settings are similar to those of someone who has UARS. The settings are VPAPAuto 4.4-10.0 with a pressure support of 2.2. I know using a CPAP on my own isn’t recommended but I’m at my wits end with troubled sleep and would do anything for a solid night of sleep. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

[Sleeprider]

I'm fine with self-treatment, and the charts you posted show excellent therapy at very low pressure of EPAP min 4.4, PS 2.2 and max pressure 10.0. You never got above 8.0/5.8 (IPAP/EPAP). If you have sleep apnea or upper airway resistance syndrome, it is resolved at low pressure. If this felt better than your sleep without CPAP, you can source a Resmed Airsense 10 Autoset and just use a minimum pressure of 7.0, max pressure at 10 and EPR 2 or 3. At this point, if you feel better with CPAP therapy give it a longer-term try and see if it resolve some other issues. That is really the bottom line. If you don't need a full-face interface, the nasal pillows are pretty nice and a bunch cheaper.

SearchTempest is your friend to find what you're looking for.

[Sleeprider]

A quick note on your charts. We want to see Events, Flow rate (missing), Pressure or Mask Pressure, Flow Limit, Leaks, snores Most of the rest is only if we see an issue. I can see places in your chart where a full breath is missing as indicated by white space where the blue mask pressure should be. 3:45, 08:00 and a few more places. Those are good locations to zoom into about a 2-3 minute segment to see what is going on with the flow rate chart.

[JazzyJess]

Thank you SleepRider, the Tempest search looks like it has a lot of useful info. I'm starting to read through it all.

[JazzyJess]

I had trouble posting this screenshot earlier.

[Sleeprider]

This second screenshot has useful information.  We can see what appears to be normal sleep respiration coming into the event. The last breath before the OA has a flattened inspiratory peak, actually descending in volume. This is flow limitation or obstruction, however there is no exhale until the apnea ends where the exhale dip occurs, then a recovery breath, after which normal breathing resumes. We can reasonably conclude this is not a true OA, but a pause in breathing, probably a swallow.  Looks like pretty good results overall to me.

If you really want to make the Flow Rate chart easy to read, you can right-click near the title and use the context menu to add a dotted line at zero. This will clearly define the zero-flow crossover, above is inspiration, below is exhale.  For extra credit, select the Y-Axis and override auto scale with a custom scale such as -100 to +100 mL.

[Dormeo]

Jess, your usage times are very long. Is that because you're trying to piece together enough sleep to get by on during the day? How long have you been having those long nights in bed?

Here's some information about hypersomnia from a trusted web site:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/w...our-health

Anything there ring a bell for you?

[BigDreamer]

My suggestion would be to get a real sleep test because otherwise we're all guessing in the dark (pardon the pun).

You can Google 'home sleep test' and there is a site which I think is called 'CPap my way' which has one for <$200.

Well worth it to get some real conclusive info..

Good luck!

[SarcasticDave94]

Admitted a sleep study is a good idea and admission 2 is I'm not a healthcare pro. Even so, I support the OPs action in getting the PAP she has and its usage. I see "artifacts" of apnea related events worthy of the PAP treatment device.

Sure go ahead and get the PSG or home sleep study to have it on record cannot hurt the cause. Then again given enough on PAP time that itself should be cause for continued PAP treatment if evidence is presented to a doctor worth his medical degree's salt.