Does the Vauto display RERA?

[happydreams]

@ happydreams


I notice from your "looking for some help" thread that you have some UFs (user defined flags) set up. How do you know how/what to set up, based on what you are looking for?

Sorry I missed the question.  These flags are just convenience features.  In my case, I was interested in events just under what is considered to be apnea.  My reasoning was, if there are many of these events, they may be significant.  If there's only a couple, I don't think they are significant.  For me, it is hard to argue that they have no significance at all.  10 9 second events are likely as disturbing as 9 10 second events.  Integral calculus taught me that the sum of infinitesimals do in fact yield a finite result.
In my case, the number of UF events are comparable in duration to the apneic events, so I do look at them.

I used UF1 = 20% reduction in flow for at least 9.0 seconds, and UF2 = 50% reduction in flow for at least 9.0 seconds.  Of the two, only UF2 is a useful metric to me.  OSCAR seems to find a bunch of UF2 events (in my case) that meet this criterion.  Last night, for instance there were 9.  They were (18, 15, 9, 11, 11, 10, 15, 12, 10) seconds in duration.  These events were NOT tagged by the PAP as apnea, but they are in fact disturbances in flow rate.  Most of the events are indistinguishable from apnea, at least to my (untrained) eye.  To me, the events are significant in that they often disturb my sleep cycle and can prevent me from entering a deeper restorative sleep stage.  I am a light sleeper, any disturbance, like a light, or sound, or UF2 will delay my entry into restorative sleep. If I have events that are spaced by less than 1/2 hour, I never get into restorative sleep.  (Then I have a horrible following day...)  At least that's how it seems to me.

Roughly speaking, how I feel is inversely proportional to AHI+UF2.  Or Smiles = 1/(AHI+UF2).  You may be different.

Of course, treating the UFx events is the same as apnea.  Which is probably why most folks say, ignore that stuff, and just attempt to minimize AHI.

[SevereApnea]

@ happydreams

Thanks for the reply. Interesting, I had never looked at those, or knew about them.
I see where you are coming from and how they may be useful to you.

I have "switched" these on in Oscar ( 20% and 50% for 8 seconds respectively, this seems to be the default) and had a brief eyeball through the charts of the last month or two. I can see these appear to come randomly but there are associations with:

1. sudden changes in Pulse Rate, which I could not explain before, or even sudden increase in Resp Rate.
2. sometimes they come in clusters on their own, coinciding with Flow Limitations on the chart.
3. certainly sometimes they are there within the 15 minutes or so before I awake at some silly time of the early morning, with no OSA, HA or CA to otherwise explain the arousal.
4. sometimes they occur in association with clusters of OSA or CA and sometimes even precede the CA.
5. The UF2 events in particular are more numerous than my OA and CA.
6. Last night I had 10 UF2, max duration 14 seconds.

They seem to be a sort of subclinical marker of flow limitation.

At no point were they ever associated with oxygen desaturation, encouraging of course, but still a potential cause of arousals.

I am hoping that as I adjust to increased pressures, and less aerophagia, I will be able to reduce the Flow Limitations more and have better sleep, and hopefully these too will clear up.

I think this is worth looking at in more detail as you have done, as a way of fine tuning things. Something for the backburner on a rainy day!

Appreciate your detailed reply, thanks!