CPAP Still Necessary? Was it ever necessary?

[RoyMunson]

TL;DR: Even if CPAP is working; should there be recorded Obstructive Apnea events? It is concerning if there's rarely ever an OA event reported in Oscar?


I'm 5'11, 167lbs. The past few years have had many stressful life events. My sleep is horrible; I wake up all night long and struggle to fall back asleep. Family health problems (not my own) led a doctor to recommend a sleep study that reports my AHI ranged from 3 to 17 (Moderate). It did not indicate which events produced the AHI. It was a home study and the breath/nose sensor beeped all night at me; presumably due to being a 'shallow breather'.

Fast forward 7 months. My pressure is 4-7, average AHI is 1.96. Some days I wake up at 0.2 AHI, others 2.5. It's rarely above 2.5. Here's where I question if this is all necessary. I rarely ever see an Obstructive Apnea event. I have to go back 3+ weeks to find a single event in Oscar; and even then, it's 1 event. Everything is a central airway (CA) event or Hypopnea event. Sometimes a few RERA events. My sleep quality seems no better with CPAP than without (once in a while I sleep without it for the night).

I do sometimes catch myself drifting off and taking a long time to breathe, it can jolt me awake. I assume this is the central apnea part. Anyway; even if therapy is working; should there be detected obstructive apnea events and thus the machine responding to them? Or, if it's working properly, would it produce a situation where these events never have the opportunity to occur? I'll bring this up with the doc; but my next appointment is some time away. Trying to gauge if I'm overthinking all of this with access to the data or not. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[gainerfull]

You don't have obstructive events because your CPAP is keeping your airway open enough to prevent them. Considering your AHI swings so much it sounds like you could use some help optimizing your therapy. If you'd like to post your last couple of nights of OSCAR daily view perhaps we can help.

If you want to test the theory, buy an sp02 ring like the wellue one and sleep without cpap for one night and look at how terrible your blood oxygen levels are off CPAP.

[SarcasticDave94]

A few things, as mentioned, you'd by necessity be referring to CPAP therapy being used or you'd not be able to tell us your current AHI. Your currently low to no events is only because there's a CPAP doing something.

Your pressures are quite low, so they likely need adjusted. To do so, we'll need to see the data, preferably OSCAR. With those low pressures, you likely are not getting any benefit from any EPR that may be on.

What you want to look at besides OSCAR was what did your sleep study show. You did request yours right? You should have. You'll want to know what they're attempting to treat.

Until CPAP therapy is optimized, you're possibly gaining very little. Second, depending on how bad apnea and AHI were before therapy, along with what type of apnea, and how long you had untreated apnea, all add up to not going to instantly erase the sleep deprived damage.

Best solution is show OSCAR data from the free app and an SD card in the CPAP collecting data. The SD card then goes to your computer to populate OSCAR charts. Show also your sleep study data redacted of personal info. There's a need to know where you were and where you're at with CPAP to know how to help your journey to better sleep.

[Phaleronic]

Hi Roy, as Dave and Gainer stated we need to see the data

[Rickyricardo]

I'd think AHI of 2 and above would be high to me, and would suggest having the pressure range set a bit higher which would also allow ramping to work which it won't at 4 cm.