New and Trying to Understand Scores

[Dbneidert]

Hey all, first I'm really grateful for the forum. It's helped already. I'm newly diagnosed with mild OSA and I'm in my first week with my APAP. I was given a Respironics Dream Station with built in Humidifier.

For the last five nights I have been tracking my AHI scores just trying to understand everything. My sleep study showed a 13 AHI with a dip to 86% O2 desaturation. For the first night on my APAP I was down to a 5.4 which I thought was great but now I'm climbing back up with scores in the 8 - 12 range. Generally speaking my hypoapneas are much higher 40 - 50 per night and my OAs are 10 or more and CA ("clear") in the same range.

So two real questions:

1. Is it fairly normal to have hypoapnea events in the 50s?
2. My first night was good and now I'm back up closer to my original score. Should I expect a more gradual improvement? I don't want to mess with pressure just yet in case I need more time to adjust.

Overal my mask fit is good at between 97% and 100% (I have a full face mask).

Thanks for any experience or help understand the breakdown of scores. I'm not sure that it was good that I could get and app and track the actual HA v OA v CA. LOL Now I'm watching it like a hawk.

This world is very new to me and I'm definitely starting to realize that this diagnosis is a bit more complex than "yeah you just have to wear a thing at night."

[Crimson Nape]

Hi Dbneidert,



I would recommend that you download SleepyHead for a better picture of your sleep sessions. The numbers are used as a gauge point but don't give the "why" you're at a certain value. SleepyHead will provide more detail to help.

Here is the link to the latest (This link is the same as at the top of the page.):
http://OSCAR Official Download Page ----> CLICK HERE ./

Good luck!

[0rangebear]

My sleep study showed a 13 AHI with a dip to 86% O2 desaturation.

A desat, of 86% should be a concern and needs to be treated

Generally speaking my hypoapneas are much higher 40 - 50 per night and my OAs are 10 or more and CA ("clear") in the same range.

1. Is it fairly normal to have hypopnea events in the 50s?

Hypopneas do cause desaturation in some people.
40 -50 is considered severe

I don't want to mess with pressure just yet in case I need more time to adjust.

Caution in making adjustment is wise, some people make too many random adjustments which makes it harder to evaluate the trends. In my experience you need 4 days to week on a setting to have a significant sample. If it was me I would inform my doctor of the high number of hypopneas and get his advice on raising the low end pressure.

Once you have sleepyhead running an in place and can post the daily graphs, many of the folks in the forum can give you more specific advice on the data and trends: sleep-well:


Quote

[chill]

We really do need the SleepyHead data to say anything definitive.

How bad 50 hypopneas is depends on how long you were sleeping. If that is over 10 hours, and nothing else happened, that would be an AHI of 5.0 so within the 'treated' range. I would not consider that as representing a restful night's sleep however.

I also had my pressure needs rise after a few weeks. This might mean your body/mind is adjusting to the pressure which results in deeper sleep and more apnea related events. Or it might mean something else. I only know what happened to me.

Your range of 5-8 seems low to me, at least on the 5 side. I'd have trouble breathing like that. I'd not be surprised if you get a recommendation to raise that gradually. I higher pressure should result in fewer events. Should. Do you use Flex? You might want to turn that off/down at these low pressures.

Chuck

[trish6hundred]

Hi Dbneidert,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Hang in there for more answers to your questions and much success to you with your CPAP therapy.

[DeepBreathing]

G'day Dbneidert, welcome to the forum.

I'll second what has been said above - SleepyHead software will give you some very detailed information on what is happening through the night. However, it is normal to take a while to get used to the therapy and you probably shouldn't start playing with any changes until you have a solid baseline of information.

Also as mentioned above, the number of events per night is not really a meaningful measure as everybody sleeps for a different amount of time. We hoseheads talk in terms of events per hour, which gives a uniform basis for comparison. All the indices (AHI, AI, HI etc) are all the number of events divided by the number of hours of sleep.

[Rcgop]

I too was chasing the numbers but I am starting to ignore them (Well not really ). I am changing the COMFORT settings.

EPR - From off to 2
Min pressure from 4 to 5. For me that was a comfort thing.
Ramp off. Why get a late start.
Sit back and enjoy the ride.

From a comfort stand point the light came on, or from a sleep stand point the lights went out.

Ureaka, 8 hours of sleep or rest and the numbers followed.
Best night ever.