1 Week in - Treatment regimen central apnea?

[mikaelbb]

Hello! I've now been using my CPAP for 1 week and I'm looking for ways I can improve my treatment.

So far I've been having a daily AHI between 5-10, close to 100 % CA. I'm not used to the CPAP yet so I'm awake a lot, and because of that I think my AHI could actually be higher.

From when I go to bed and before I fall asleep, I can feel myself slipping into a state where I stop breathing. I say that I'm not asleep because I can think and act/move as I want to. Also, throughout the night I will feel many apneas, it will put me into a half wake/half sleep-state where I can feel how I stop breathing but I can't do anything about it. Similar to sleep paralysis. Note, I want to say that this experience is not exclusive to CPAP usage, this is also how it is to sleep for me without the CPAP.

I have attached OSCAR data if someone wants to take a look at it. I'm wondering what I could be experiencing, perhaps it's treatment regiment central apnea.

   

[Dodies]

Hi, the problem I see with your settings is that min pressure is too low, its recommended that the minimum be at least 7, as anything lower is giving you no treatment at all, hence you are feeling that way when dozing off. Personally my min is 10, i like the comfort of knowing the machine will keep my airway open at all times. If I was you, I would set to 7 or even 8/9 min.

Also, your max at 10 was hit during that night and your settings prevented it going higher. Personally I have my max at 15, it never gets there, but sometimes gets to 12.5 during the night, so if I was you, id increase to at least 12 or 13 and see what happens.

I found I had a lot of CR's with the EPR setting at 3, I cut it down to 2 and my CR's vanished, so that's something else you can experiment with. Don't be afraid to try stuff, use OSCAR to see the settings changes you made and use the data to help you tune up your sleep.

[G. Szabo]

I agree that both your minimum and maximum pressure should be increased.
I suggest Pressure min/max = 8/11 cm. This setting will reduce your Hs. 
Hopefully, your CAs are treatment-emerging and will diminish. You should check your sleep report to be sure. You might want to upload its anonymized version. If no significant CAs were observed, keep your EPR in the current setting.
Also, males are doing better with the Standard response than the Soft.

[SarcasticDave94]

To determine what action for Central Apnea treatment, you'd first need to know the data on them regarding the sleep study. Depending on what that tells you on the CA, it would help guide to reducing them. If they're just treatment emergent CA, then you can try to avoid them with a low pressure range. If on VAuto, there's a Trigger setting to help. If the CA were dominant on the test, then ASV is the better answer.