Humidity on Philips Respironics A40

[DBTaylor]

Hello all, I'm new to the forum, and new to CPAP therapy. Quick history: I was given my Philips Respironics A40 BiPAP machine after my uncle passed away from ALS. My aunt said I could have it if I got tested and needed one. Tests results were that I was stopping breathing over 100 times an hour, and my oxygen levels were dipping down to below 50%. I'm now on the machine, which works great, except I cannot get the humidity level correct for some reason. When my uncle had it (he used it for only 8 months before he passed away, so it's basically a new unit) he was using more than 1 tank of water. I was told 2 tanks, but not sure how much of the second one was gone. The max I can get is less than 1/2 a tank used, and my mouth gets dry. It's dry enough that I wake up and need to rinse and drink some water.

The settings on the machine are a bit confusing to me. I'm using a heated tube (my uncle did too) and I've got the setting on that down to 1 (can select 0-3, 0 being off.)  The humidifier I've got set to 5 (can select 0-5) in the main settings, however once I get to the patient menu, it only allows me a max setting of 3. The manuals are useless in this regards because the unit manual says to go to the humidifier manual to set the humidity, and the humidifier manual says to go to the unit manual for humidification setup.

I'm wondering if humidity has a max setting on CPAP mode of 3 and goes to 5 on BiPAP or AVAPS mode... not sure. I'm using CPAP mode since that is my prescription.

The health care provider I have is probably of no use, since she had never seen this unit before. That was funny, as she was pushing for me to buy a new machine, which was their generic one that she is used to. Once she seen what this one does, she was almost drooling over it; obviously she is not familiar enough with it to help me with this setting.

I did try air tube setting of 2, and that was really dry, so back to 1 on it.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[pholynyk]

You mention having manuals and I was wondering if you have the Clinicians' Setup manual, which can be obtained by following the Setup Manuals link in the black bar at the top of the page. It does have the A40 in the list available by email. There is often more detail there than in the User's Guide.

[trish6hundred]

Hi DBTaylor,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Hang in there for more answers to your questions about your machine.
Good luck with CPAP therapy.

[DBTaylor]

Update on my original post: I may have it figured out. The humidifier is a System One. I read in another post about turning off the system one humidifier in the clinical settings. I did that, then turned off it in the patient menu, and now I am able to set it the humidity to 5, so I'll find out tonight what will happen and I`ll post the results tomorrow.

Thanks for the replies. On the clinical manual... it's 1 page that's supposed to be torn out of the manual before giving it to the patient. All it says is how to get into the clinical menu. The rest is all described in the manual; just that the patient can't get to it to change it. Of course, I know the Alarm-Up key combination secret, hehe. Although I will check out the link in case there is a secret manual they`re not telling me about.

[DBTaylor]

So turning off the system one in the clinical menu worked, as I was able to select a 5 setting on humidity, and it was nice and humid. Of course, as my luck would have it, this turned out to be annoying as the mask I have is a simplus, which has small holes to vent your outbreath through. Once moist with that much humidity they started to whistle. I tried turning it down to 4, and there was still sound. I did order a different mask, which should be in today (Resmed fit20 I think, something like that) so I think that will work better for me.

[Sleeprider]

A fleece hose cover might help out with that condensation issue. When I used an older System One before heated tubing, I actually bought a Sleepzone heated tube from Australia. They have increased in price and I would not touch it at the current $185 AUD. Anyway, a fleece cover is comfortable and functional as well as cheap.