Frustrated with Dream Station 2

[sharadn]

I have been on CPAP therapy for about 15 years and overall have had good results. I recently received a Dream Station 2 from Resmed due to the recall effort. We have two residences and I use an Airsense 11 at our primary residence and brought the Dream Station to our secondary residence without testing it before hand. That is where I am at now. I also have an AirMini for travel. My AHIs have always been quite acceptable <5 with both Airsense and the AirMini. Since using the Dream Station my AHIs have gone up to 7-8. I originally setup the Dream Station with the same settings as my Airsense 11 and the AirMini (auto min:4 and max:8). As mentioned these settings have worked well for me for years. I don't know what to think about the Dream Station and if I should believe the AHIs as reported or not. I have tried to raise the pressure up to min 8 and max 15 but the AHIs is still high 7.4. I am wondering if the Dream Station is working properly or not. Comments and/or suggestions?

[Old Steve]

For anyone to be of much help you really need to download the OSCAR program available for free on this site.  You will also need a SD card.  See the OSCAR download in the black ribbon at the top of the page.  Once you have OSCAR post a couple nights charts and either I or someone else should be able to help you.

Welcome to the forum.

[Alghamdi]

log to clinical mode and make sure the EZ-start is turned off

[MrIvanDrago]

I started my first year with the Dreamstation 2 and then switched to a Resmed machine the last year. The differences are dramatic. The Dreamstation need much higher pressure settings to compare to the ResMed. I currently use a ResMed VAUTO and my pressures are 14.0/10.0. With the Dreamstation, my pressure had to be set to 17.0 to come close to effective therapy. IMO, the Dreamstation 2 is a garbage product.

[SarcasticDave94]

You probably mean Philips Respironics sent you a DreamStation 2 due to the foam issue. I do agree with the following, you'll need to post OSCAR charts for us to help guide setting changes, and the PR DreamStation requires higher pressures than with ResMed. The PR are reactionary devices and typically aren't proactive in bumping up your pressures with their auto algorithm. ResMed, as you probably feel for yourself, is proactive with its auto pressure bumps when events arise. The solution is more base pressure setting on the PR.

[MrIvanDrago]

I found that not only the auto algorithm is not good, but the straight pressures need to be upped a bit as well. It's not worth the headache using that machine at all, IMO.

[sharadn]

Thank you all for your input. My experience supports the observations by MrIvanDrago. I have downloaded, setup and imported data to Oscar. Being newbie here I don't know how to post the information. If someone could point me in the right direction it would be great.

[sharadn]

       

Please let me know if I did this correctly.

[SarcasticDave94]

Sure. You'll probably get better direction from others, but here's a shot at it.

Find the daily details area. There's supposed to be a default view I think, but you'll want to drag these 5 to the top of the chart view: Events (pin this in to the top), Flow Rate, Pressure, Leaks, Flow Limit.

There's a near invisible divider line between those charts. Point at it and grab to slide the height of those charts so all 5 will fit in one screenshot.

On the left side, turn off the calendar by clicking the triangle between month and year.

Once this is done, click F12 on Windows computer to get screenshot. Mac has a combo to get screenshot including F12 but I've forgotten it.

Onto Apnea Board, begin a post says what you will, then at the bottom is a New Attachment area. Go through that, pointing the screenshot file of OSCAR you just took. It'll generate a line insert of this shot image file on your post.

[StratCat48]

I have both the DS2 and AS10. The DS2 is my primary machine (Medicare/insurance pay for supplies) and the AS10 is a backup which I use every few months to ensure it still works OK. I set the AS10 as close as I could to the DS2 settings. The AHI's I get between the two machines track pretty well in a comparison. The pressure does function a bit different between machines for events. Not everyone is the same and perhaps the DS2 algorithm just won't work for you, but maybe with some OSCAR graphs something can be suggested for setting tweaks to improve the AHI numbers
Screenshots with F12 function key, calendar minimized to show more data.