[Diagnosis] Resmed MyAir

[HairPower]

I am new to CPAP therapy and have subscribed to MyAir for daily results.  Whilst I realise MyAir is fairly basic, in their score out of 100, why do they allocate 70 points for usage and only 5 points for AHI?  Doesn’t this give a skewed view of my CPAP therapy.  I could have an unacceptable AHI of 60 and because MyAir only rates AHI with 5 points, still get 95/100 on my results.  Alternatively, I could have a late night, but with great AHI and only score 75/100.  Resmed answered by saying always check with your sleep professional.  But why do they have a scoring system that is flawed?  Perhaps I may have to take a SleepyHead course. Thanks.

[Walla Walla]

It's to motivate people to use their machines. The DMEs and Doctors don't use it.

[srlevine1]

Walla Walla is spot on! It is an engagement device and heavily weights usage to encourage you to use the machine for at least 7-hours (max score 70 points).

[SarcasticDave94]

I agree with others. It's to motivate CPAP usage.

IMO here on Apnea Board, we attempt to motivate your CPAP usage by:

1. viewing data on SleepyHead

2. help educate you what you're seeing

3. how the various apnea types hinder your sleep

4. how and why it should be fixed

All the above together will motivate you to use the device because the therapy will be proven successful when it's adapted to your individual needs.

[Ron AKA]

I am new to CPAP therapy and have subscribed to MyAir for daily results.  Whilst I realise MyAir is fairly basic, in their score out of 100, why do they allocate 70 points for usage and only 5 points for AHI?  Doesn’t this give a skewed view of my CPAP therapy.  I could have an unacceptable AHI of 60 and because MyAir only rates AHI with 5 points, still get 95/100 on my results.  Alternatively, I could have a late night, but with great AHI and only score 75/100.  Resmed answered by saying always check with your sleep professional.  But why do they have a scoring system that is flawed?  Perhaps I may have to take a SleepyHead course. Thanks.

From a provider's point of view the biggest problem with the use of CPAP therapy is that patients are non compliant. They either don't wear it at all, or take it off after a couple of hours, or don't put it on every night. They see getting patients to wear the CPAP as a bigger problem than optimizing the setup of the CPAP for each individual patient. That is the reason for the weighting - to try and improve compliance.

However, if you are a compliant patient, and just want to optimize the setup of the CPAP then the MyAir reports are next to useless. I can't be bothered with them. Your information suggest you are running pretty high pressures, and you may be able to benefit from some optimization. SleepyHead would be very helpful in determining if there are opportunities to improve or not. I highly recommend it.

[HairPower]

Thanks Ron AKA and others for the replies. I was diagnosed with an AHI of 81 during my sleepover at the clinic - hence I guess the 16-20 pressure. My AHI is now down to around 2.5 every night and I am no longer sleepy through the day so I guess the therapy is working. Apart from the AHI, what other factors are important when I look at my results on SleepHead?

[Crimson Nape]

. . . Apart from the AHI, what other factors are important when I look at my results on SleepyHead?

It would probably be better for you to show a couple night's Daily screen shots here. Using your sleep data we can describe the how's and why's of our recommendations.  This will allow you to more easily gain an understanding of chart interpretation.  

The preferred way to organize the graphs, features to turn off, and how to perform a screen capture are described in the links in my signature below.

Goo luck.

[Ron AKA]

Thanks Ron AKA and others for the replies.  I was diagnosed with an AHI of 81 during my sleepover at the clinic - hence I guess the 16-20 pressure.   My AHI is now down to around 2.5 every night and I am no longer sleepy through the day so I guess the therapy is working.  Apart from the AHI, what other factors are important when I look at my results on SleepHead?

I guess I am kind of a cut to the chase guy. CPAP is most effective in treating obstructive apnea and at the same time hypopnea. It does it mainly through opening up the airway with air pressure. So what I look at first are the OA events. One easy way is to use the Events tab, and within that the obstructive event listing. As you click on each event it will produce a narrow focus on what was happening at the time. I put my cursor over the mask pressure (if you have a ResMed), or the EPAP pressure, and make a bit of a manual list of the pressure at which the event occurred. If you are to adjust pressures it gives you some estimate of how many events you would possibly avoid if the pressure was increased. The other perhaps quicker way is just look along the dips in the pressure and see if any events have occurred when the pressure was low due to auto action. Those are opportunities to improve with increased minimum pressure. And I also look for flat tops on the maximum pressure and see if any significant events have occurred when pressure is maxed out. I don't worry much about hypopnea events and just assume if I can limit OA's they will will come down too. That leaves the central events, and unfortunately there is not much you can do about them with CPAP, and if anything you are looking to see if adjustments are actually increasing their frequency. If CA events are a significant part of your residual AHI then there probably is not a lot you can do about it, and one should not fret about trying to fix what you can't fix. On the other hand if you have an AHI of 2.5 and it is not centrals then there may be some opportunity to improve that. My wife was diagnosed at an AHI of 77, and she averages under 1.0 for AHI now. I was diagnosed at 37 and am ecstatic if I can get under 3.0! Centrals are the difference.

[HairPower]

Thanks Ron AKA for the helpful info. I am trying to become proficient on reading SleepyHead. It’s also great that you can post data to this forum and have so many knowledgeable members offer a diagnosis. Thank you.

[OpalRose]

Hi HairPower,
Don’t forget to check out the Beginners Guide to SleepyHead.

http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...SleepyHead