DavidAM - Treatment

[DavidAM]

Yes, @BoxcarPete. I talked to the guy from the company that I rent my APAP from and he thinks an "N20" would be a better fit from me. I have an appointment with him in 10 days, so I'll have to wait and see.

@Sleeprider, should I keep my current pressure settings?

[DavidAM]

I've switched my range to 10-13.2 and I've set my ramp time to 10 min, just because I have gotten some aerophagia and I want to be more precise in finding a sweet spot where to optimize FL treatment while maintaining a good level of comfort. I slept the best the nights I had some ramp time, I think.

[Sleeprider]

Your results have been good at all settings, If you have aerophagia, then you have to accommodate that to keep therapy comfortable.

[DavidAM]

Thank you. Shouldn't I be aiming to keep FLs below 0.05?

[Sleeprider]

David, we do what we can with the tools we have. We could eliminate your flow limits with a bilevel device, but that's not currently in your bedroom. We can discuss how to go about changing that.

[DavidAM]

Last night I had a lot of centrals and more FLs than the previous night; I think it's due to the fact that my leak rate was also much higher, but I'd appreciate your input, Sleeprider - there may be something else I'm not seeing. I'll have to change my mask, that's already for sure. I'll upload the data both from the previous night and last night - to make their comparison easier.

Sleeprider, I'll keep trying to treat them with the best of my APAP's capacity with a better mask and while the trial lasts. If, in several weeks from now, results are still not very good, I'll definitely ask you how to go about switching to BiPAP. Thank you, again; you're helping a lot with my treatment.

[DavidAM]

I also wanted to ask: should I establish my pressure range depending on the 95% or the 99.5% pressure values? I'm planning to up my min from 9.6 to 10.2 and to decrease my max from 13.4 to 13, just so that the machine can respond faster to any FLs; although I'm not sure if I should decrease my max that much, as the 99.5% IPAP was 13.4 last night.

Also, I've been studying my leak rate graph and it seems to match very well the subsequent periods of event clusters, be they central or obstructive. I suppose that the mask gets moved and loses some seal when I roll over, or something.

[DavidAM]

It seems last night my sleep quality was very good, apart from some centrals which, I hope, will diminish with time. My FL was 0.01, which is incredible; hope to be able to keep them there. I ended up going for a pressure range of 10.6-13.4.

[Sleeprider]

Results seem to be holding steady at less than 2/hour and leaks are trending down. Things looks pretty stable here.

[DavidAM]

Thank you. Should it be worrying for me that I still haven't seen any symptomatic improvement? I feel the same as I did before starting.