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10-05-2023, 09:46 AM (This post was last modified: 10-05-2023, 09:47 AM by nachumj.)
reading oscar data- deep sleep
I have been a apap user for over 10 years, very satisfied. 62 year old male in good health. I now use a prismasmart with nose pillows and it is a great machine.
No sleeping aids, no snoring, long term AHI 5, pressure 6-7.5 .
I have noticed that the deep sleep fraction has dropped in the last two years. My question is, how accurate are the deep sleep measurements. Clearly there are artifacts, such as when the data claims a 4 second deep sleep.
I dont see a correlation to the other graphs to the deep sleep . How is it determined?
From day to day it jumps from 4 % to 17 % , for example.
Do i need to improve the deep sleep fraction? how?
Considering your AHI is relatively high you could be having apnea events during different sleep stages which is contributing to fragmentation of your deep sleep.
Have you ever shared OSCAR charts here for eval? We might be able to help you get even better sleep.
Step 1: Fix your leaks, they are very high and will impact your therapy.
Your profile says you're using nasal pillows so the leaks are likely mouth drop / the pressure blowing your mouth open at night. Have you tried simplifying your setup by going full face mask? What about mouth tape or a chin strap?
How are you sure you aren't having leaks from your mouth? Are you using tape and or a chin strap? Are the pillows you're using too big for your nostrils and you're moving them when you change positions? The red line in the leak graph shows you the expected leak from the mask which is 25 l/min so anything above and beyond that can potentially be causing an arousal that you won't be conscious of.
One way to tell when you're in REM is to look at your respiratory rate as it will get more rapid and the macro / condensed view of your flow rate will look jagged. I'm not super familiar w/ looking at Prisma data but it looks like you could definitely use more minimum pressure. Have you tried / tolerated higher pressures? You had over 50 respiratory related arousals in the night you posted so I'd recommend you raise your minimum pressure by 1cmH20 per night until you see less RERAs. The reason you're not getting good sleep metrics is because your sleep is being disrupted by RERAs and Hypopneas all night to a severe degree.
Another thing to mention is some of your events are very close together so you may be experiencing some positional apnea as well which cannot be solved by more pressure.
