05-16-2024, 08:42 AM
Mask Type Setting impact on therapy
Hi everyone,
I'm still chugging along with my variety of full face masks, but I am struggling with leaks still. I have my Vitera, my dreamwear full face, my Evora full face, and my F30. All of them leak in different ways and in different places. Vitera is unusable. I started going back to the Dreamwear full face with the inlet at the top of the head, but as I move around the pressure pushes out the top corners of the mouth/nose cover, because those hoses just stretch and aren't good at keeping adequate tension to keep a good seal. For a while I tried lowering the max pressure and loosening up the straps on the Evora. That helped with lowering the AHI (I think the straps were pulling the lower jaw back too tightly), but apart from a short window of time, I still get leaks of 24-30 each night.
I attempted to go back to my p10, to see if I am any better at keeping my mouth closed and keeping my tongue at the roof of my mouth. I am better at it, but it's not consistent enough to be sustainable long term. I hate these masks. I cannot find the sweet spot that I can rely on consistently.
I have been reading about how some recommend different mask settings on the CPAP itself to help with various issues. I read recently about one guy in Tennessee who suggests nasal mask users go for the Full Face setting on their machines. I also see that the new F40 mask suggests using the "pillow" setting. Does anyone have any idea about how the mask settings differ as far as the machine response to events? I'm curious to know if trying my p10 with the full face setting might help with the air blowing my mouth open. The machine uses a consistently lower pressure with the p10 than with the full face masks (max of around 13 for the p10, max of around 15.8 for the full face masks of various kinds). Has anyone experimented with this or have any insight?
I'm still chugging along with my variety of full face masks, but I am struggling with leaks still. I have my Vitera, my dreamwear full face, my Evora full face, and my F30. All of them leak in different ways and in different places. Vitera is unusable. I started going back to the Dreamwear full face with the inlet at the top of the head, but as I move around the pressure pushes out the top corners of the mouth/nose cover, because those hoses just stretch and aren't good at keeping adequate tension to keep a good seal. For a while I tried lowering the max pressure and loosening up the straps on the Evora. That helped with lowering the AHI (I think the straps were pulling the lower jaw back too tightly), but apart from a short window of time, I still get leaks of 24-30 each night.
I attempted to go back to my p10, to see if I am any better at keeping my mouth closed and keeping my tongue at the roof of my mouth. I am better at it, but it's not consistent enough to be sustainable long term. I hate these masks. I cannot find the sweet spot that I can rely on consistently.
I have been reading about how some recommend different mask settings on the CPAP itself to help with various issues. I read recently about one guy in Tennessee who suggests nasal mask users go for the Full Face setting on their machines. I also see that the new F40 mask suggests using the "pillow" setting. Does anyone have any idea about how the mask settings differ as far as the machine response to events? I'm curious to know if trying my p10 with the full face setting might help with the air blowing my mouth open. The machine uses a consistently lower pressure with the p10 than with the full face masks (max of around 13 for the p10, max of around 15.8 for the full face masks of various kinds). Has anyone experimented with this or have any insight?
