My doctor finally agrees...High therapy pressures can increase apnea events

[S. Manz]

I have been trying to get a reaction from my less than enthusiastic sleep specialist in regards to high CPAP pressures and studies which have concluded that high CPAP therapy pressures actually help increase apnea events when a machine is not used for sleep but she has been non-committal until today when she randomly brought the subject up during a monthly consult and said " it looks like low therapy pressures are working for you. Keep the setting low as they are at around 8 because high CPAP therapy pressures can actually increase apnea events".....I almost fell off my chair  .
She went on to explain that a large group of people who respond well to low pressure therapy, will actually develop a more heightened apnea, if treated with higher pressures that the need, which is kid of weird, but nevertheless true, according to research.

[SarcasticDave94]

"studies which have concluded that high CPAP therapy pressures actually help increase apnea events when a machine is not used for sleep"

What would you use a CPAP, BPAP, ST, ST-A, ASV machine for that isn't related to sleep breathing? If you're using a sleep breathing therapy device for non-sleep issues, you should expect the machine to react differently than was designed for usage that it wasn't designed for. I don't need research to tell me that.

[S. Manz]

I wasn't clear, my bad.
The studies were conducted on people who have been on CPAP for a while and found that their apnea events have actually increased since they were prescribed. THis was more prevalent among patients with high pressure Rx settings.

[clownbell]

Wow, that IS counter-intuitive - at least for this nonexpert. On the other hand, I have found that, through experience and experimentation, outcomes are different that I would have predicted by logic. This is true IMO in several fields, not just apnea.