F&P Icon Premo Features and Flow Limitations

[clemon]

Hi folks. I'm new to the forum. Been using CPAP since July of 2013, and just now found and installed Sleepyhead software. Wish I had found it months ago!

I have an F&P Icon Premo CPAP. I have been using the machine's Ramp feature to start at 7 bars pressure and ramp up to my prescribed 11 bars as I fall asleep. I've also been using the Premo's SensAwake feature, which drops pressure down to 7 bars when it reads that I'm waking and then climbs back to 11 as I settle back into sleep.

Looking over the Sleepyhead stats for this week, I noticed a correlation between Flow limitation events and drops in CPAP pressure, presumably the drops associated with the Premo's SensAwake feature (?).

Can anyone with experience with the F&P Icon machine confirm what I think is happening here? Should I turn OFF the SensAwake feature and/or increase the starting Ramp pressure to see if that helps? I suppose it's the only way to confirm my suspicions, but am wondering if anyone can provide real-world evidence before I bugger about with machine settings?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice.

[zonk]

I,m not sure exactly of the benefit of senseawake, nothing like Resmed EPR which drops pressure at exhale which might helps people who find hard to breathe out against pressure
Either ignore flow limitation events or turn it off and see what happen, nothing ventured .. nothing gained

[clemon]

Thanks Zonk. I'll try turning the Sensawake feature off and see what happens!

[trish6hundred]

Hi clemon,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
What zonk said.
Best of luck and hang in there for more suggestions.

[clemon]

Follow-up: I adjusted my machine last night - instead of turning the SensAwake feature off, I raised its lower limit to 9cmH20 instead of 7cmH20. Results are unclear. Last night's AHI was 7.53, about average for the last month. Thursday night's AHI was 3.30, which statistically speaking is an outlier.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether a flow limit/hypopnea event is waking me up, thus triggering the Sensawake to drop pressure OR if the Sensawake-triggered pressure drop is leading to/causing a flow limit/hypopnea event. Chicken or Egg?? Any way to tell by looking at the Sleepyhead charts? Is it possible to do a custom report of any kind?

[Frodo]

I have an Icon Auto+, so I am not sure if this applies to your model. This is what I have seen on my events:
When falling asleep, there is an event or two (usually a hypopnea) that triggers the change to higher pressure (sleep mode). When waking, there is a sense awake event (flow limitation >= 64), which indicates that I just woke up, so the machine returns to wake mode. These events do not affect quality of sleep, they just toggle the machine between wake and sleep modes. If you see many events while at low pressure, you are probably in the wake mode when you should be in the sleep mode. If you are awake, but the pressure is too high, you are in the sleep mode when you should be in the wake mode. You can return to low pressure by pressing and holding the button until it beeps, but then it will start a 20 minute ramp period in which it will not go into sleep mode until the ramp is over. I hope this helps.

[trish6hundred]

Hi frodo,
WELCOME! to the forum.!