Help with settings/machine advice

[DazedRunner]

Hello, this is my second thread. I've been using the Airsense 10 Autoset for Her for about 3 weeks. I haven't had many problems with sleeping with the mask, have had a few leaks and made some tweaks to it, but otherwise haven't had many issues with that. Using OSCAR I can see there's been some good nights, AHI down to 1-3, some nights higher. Which I've been pretty happy with overall. But some nights are worse.

What I'm looking for advice on is if this machine is right for me. My DME called after one week to checkup on how things are going, and told me that I am also having Central Apneas.. Something that I wasn't told I had during my sleep study. She said this machine doesn't treat centrals. Found some information showing that "Clear Airway" essentially refers to Centrals. Is this correct?

I'm going to attach a few screen shots from some recent nights and would really appreciate feedback as to what's going on, and if I could change some settings to maybe get some better results, particularly reducing the Clear Airways/Central Apneas if at all possible..

I've tried to follow the advice for setting up OSCAR screenshots, so I hope it's all correct, but feel free to ask for more info/change how it's set up.

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Part of why I'd like machine advice is because my machine is up for a 1-month trial which ends later this week. After that the Doctor will follow up and prescribe me the machine permanently if it is helping (which it is). I just don't want to get stuck with a machine that won't give me the best therapy possible. I apologize for the wordy post, just hoping to provide the most background I can to ensure everything is covered.

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[DazedRunner]

Hope this works

[jaswilliams]

HI, the variation in your nightly AHI is the number of CA's (Central or ClearAirway Apnoea) yur DME is correct your machine cannot treat CA's the number of CA's you have are not enough to worry about and will likely reduce over time. You could try reducing the EPR setting from 3 to 2 it may reduce the CA's but there is not much more we can do than that. If you want to post a redacted copy of your full sleep study we can see if there was any CA's recorded on that. Often they are there but not commented upon.

[sleepyp]

Your CA count isn’t worryingly high.
It looks like higher pressure is correlated with more CAs. I also suspect your leaks correlate to CAs.
I don’t think they’re what we’d call real CAs, posted a zoomed screen grab of one so we can see what’s happening.
Leaks bother me, I’ll roll over, adjust my mask and in doing so hold my breath for 10-20 seconds. That’s not a real CA and ASV wouldn’t help me.

As an experiment, try setting your maximum pressure to 7 for 3 nights. I’ll guess that CAs will reduce to less than 1 as an average, and disappear once you sort the leaks.

[DazedRunner]

So sorry about the delay in response. Have been helping my girlfriend buy a car and work has been a bit too life-consuming. Sometimes don't turn my computer on for days.

Thanks for the replies jaswilliams and sleepyp. I just dialled those settings into my machine and will try it out for the next few nights. Will both the changes conflict with one another? If I increase the EPR, that could reduce overall pressure. So if I reduce the max pressure from 11 to 7, then could I be just getting the minimum pressure of about 6 due to increasing the EPR? Should I be trying them separately instead?

I'm so new at this, please bare (bear?) with me here. I'm just learning what all these new words and settings mean, so please correct me if I'm wrong! Also my first time changing the settings so I'm feeling a bit nervous.

jaswilliams.. I am going to call my Doctor and see if I can get a copy of my sleep study report. But that may take a little while due to the pandemic still happening.

sleepyp.. What is the graph you want a zoomed screen grab of? And how do I go about that? (and ugh, yes, I roll over so much. Leaks aren't the most fun way to wake up!)

[staceyburke]

To zoom in on an area is simple, click on the CA you want to look at and use the up and down arrows to zoom in and out.  use the right and left arrow to move that direction.  Get the zoom you want and F12.  The do the same on another.   like this...

[Strawman]

Hi There Stacey.

I have jumped on another person's thread (sorry about that DazedRunner) but I was interested in the screen shot you posted of a CA event could you please give some pointers as to why its a CA and not say a positional apnea. I know the answer is on this board somewhere and I have tried but I recognise that wave form.

First post and a newbie cpap.

[Crimson Nape]

Hi Strawman! -
A CA is the reported type of event. "Positional" would be the cause.

[sheepless]

plus, position is clearly associated with obstructive apnea, particularly clusters of obstructive events; but it's not clear, and intuitively seems a bit unlikely, that position has any bearing on central apnea.

[Strawman]

Thank you very much for your reply I have a CPAP but 90% of my apnea is clear airway. Just checking my thinking as I believe already I have the wrong machine however I will give it more time and start a thread if I need further help.