[CPAP] New with CPAP Request Assist with OSCAR Charts

[TechieHippie]

Your oxygen graph looks quite good, and not "too good". Your average is high and a single drop into the high 80s is nothing to worry about. Your lower average at the end of the night looks normal.

I'm following your story with interest. I have a lot of pulse change events also and I'm not sure how much to make of them. I think they are basically showing a more nuanced version of what's going on, and the more we can reduce them the easier on our part it will be. I do know I feel much better when I go to low altitude and have a much more flattened line.

Did you just started the oxygen?, I think at least a couple weeks, maybe months, may be needed before I would expect these to even out from the supplemental oxygen.

My dad was on a bipap with supplemental oxygen at high flow rate. I was just looking at some of the atrocious oxygen drops he had in the last couple years before he passed away. I wish I knew then what I knew now. That experience, and mine as well, suggest that deep oxygen drops have an obvious ripple effect on oxygen and heart rates variability for at least a couple of weeks (especially drops and swings during the day in response to exertion), dependent on how deep the drop(s).

[YankeeLaker]

Yes, I did just start on oxygen — less than a week. Learning as I go!

[TechieHippie]

If you want to see my last chart (with and without collar) I posted it here: https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread...ops?page=2 . 

You can't see Motion in this graph, but the hR spike at half past midnight is from motion.  I suspect many of them are - are you restless at night?

I have lots of pulse change events too, but my oxygen monitor doesn't flag them as problematic.

[YankeeLaker]

I would not say I am a restless sleeper, but I wear an Apple Watch at night, and an associated sleep app tracks my watch-based motion data. It indicates that I am getting way more restful sleep since I started oxygen. 

My oxygen meter is not what flags the heart data. The meter captures the raw heart data, but it is OSCAR, using parameters defined in the “oximetry” tab of the OSCAR settings that decides what snippets of the oximeter’s heart data gets flagged, and which snippets don’t get flagged.

[UnicornRider]

"My oxygen meter is not what flags the heart data. The meter captures the raw heart data, but it is OSCAR, using parameters defined in the “oximetry” tab of the OSCAR settings that decides what snippets of the oximeter’s heart data gets flagged, and which snippets don’t get flagged."


  You are correct, OSCAR does the work as defined by the users input.

  Techie, the click path is:  File > Preferences > Oximetry 

  Upper left hand corner of any OSCAR page.

Synchronizing the time of your *PAP machine and your Oximeter will greatly enhance your understanding of Flow Rate distortions, Event Flags, and any of the graphs from your Pulse/Oximetry/Motion imports.

When I saw that first 0.00 AHI OSCAR Report, I had no other event flags to distract me, so I started chasing the Pulse Change Flags. When I saw the relationship between distorted waveshapes and the pulse response I thought it was part of a primitive "Fight or Flight" response. Which in my own little mind, sent up a warning flag that said "If your 'Flight or Fight' response is triggered then your brain is activated, thus robbing me of undisturbed restorative sleep.

I very well could be totally wrong.

[TechieHippie]

Thanks, I hadn't caught that. They say, "Not currently functional" on mine - is that still accurate?

I'm confused about what it says about synchronization. So I should put them on at the exact same time, starting the o2 meter first so that it has time to start reading? What if I put the oxygen monitor on later, like quite a lot later - I haven't seen a difference in the graph but maybe I missed it. I've been sycning the clocks every week or so instead (I wait until the o2 monitor flips to the next minute and then set the cpap to that immediately), but it's all clunky.

[UnicornRider]

Hi Techie,  I hope we did not hijack this thread. 

With the Checkme O2 Max, my Pulse/Oximeter/Motion indicating, recording, alarming device, I can import times outside of my *PAP session and OSCAR will record and display information in all of the different fields and pages. I try to restrict my imports to Oscar to *PAP therapy usage times, but you can import any time with my equipment.

Synchronizing: I set the Pulse/Oximeter to computer time, in the O2 Insight Pro program, with my Oximeter hooked up to the computer, I go into "Configure" (upper Left on main page) then set my audible and vibratory alarm points, and there is a window for synchronizing time with the computer, click on that window.

Second step is to go into the "Clinicians Menu" of the AirCurve 10 VAuto and set time to match the wrist unit of my Checkme O2 Max. I can read time off the Checkme O2 or my Apple Watch. I make note of the time difference as they click off another couple of minutes. ie. + or _  xx seconds.

Once I know what the difference is I can start anytime reasonably close to the AirCurve 10, the graphs may not start nor end at the same time, but within xx seconds the graph times are mated. So if remember the time difference (Post-it note helps), I can match events on the Pulse/Oximeter to events on OSCAR.

Clunky & Clunkier.

But with my O2. I need it.

I hope this helps. 

Get back to me if you need more info.

[Crimson Nape]

UnicornRider - You do know that you can change the oximeter's filename to match the starting time of your CPAP and then import it to match? The time offset in the Preferences is global, and will only work for that particular day. Whereas, changing the filename before import is forever. One thing to note, Some of the newer oximeter files have a ".dat" extension. You will need to delete it for the time change to work properly in the current release of OSCAR. This has been addressed in the code and will be in the next release.

- Red

[UnicornRider]

Thanks Red,

   It is always comforting to know I have core members of the forum looking over my shoulder.

  I knew that OSCAR had a provision for "Clock Drift" but was unsure how to use it. 

 Therefore I knew by synchronizing the O2 monitor to the computer, then resetting time in the clinician's menu to match as close as possible ( usually well under 10 seconds) I do not have to worry about the time difference due to start up differences between AirCurve 10 VAuto and Checkme O2 Max.

The start and end of the OSCAR graphs Flow Rate vs. Pulse/Oximeter/Motion do not start/end at the same time, but the time within the contained graphs are sync'd within the time difference of a few seconds.

Because my Pulse/Oximeter is commonly worn throughout the day, I accidently forgot to stop and restart the Pulse/Oximeter to coincide with the AirCurve 10 one day. Due to the 10 hour session limit my Pulse/Oximeter ended a session and restarted a new session in the middle of the night. So the next day I imported two O2 Insight Pro sessions and had Pulse/Oximeter graphs that ran much longer than my Flow Rate, but the times were still Sync'd where the graphs overlapped. I could zoom in and everything looked good!

 I know a double 12 second CA, OA or UA will have an immediate pulse change and start an O2 drop that can run down in to the 70% range. So when I have multiple events throughout the night I can associate them with Pulse Change/ O2 Drops. But on those Nights I have an 0.00 AHI I can still correlate Flow Rate waveshapes with Pulse Change/O2 Drops.

I hope I am clear,