New to CPAP treatment. Quick question...

[Sleeprider]

The website lets you upload a scanned copy of a prescription or your doctor's contact information. Usually it is pretty simple for them to call your doctor's office, verify you use CPAP and that is all it takes. You don't need a prescription for the mask, just that you use CPAP. It's a total CYA in case they are audited.

[Aqualily]

The website lets you upload a scanned copy of a prescription or your doctor's contact information.  Usually it is pretty simple for them to call your doctor's office, verify you use CPAP and that is all it takes.  You don't need a prescription for the mask, just that you use CPAP. It's a total CYA in case they are audited.

Thank you! This is my first time doing all this so thanks for the help. I downloaded OSCAR and got my info uploaded with my SD card but it all looks like Greek to me! How is one supposed to read this information?

[Sleeprider]

Read the tutorials on organizing your chart and attaching files linked in my signature below. If you post it, I'll show you how to read it.

[Aqualily]

Read the tutorials on organizing your chart and attaching files linked in my signature below.  If you post it, I'll show you how to read it.

Done, hopefully this works. If I forgot something, or need to include something, please let me know. This was from last night. Also, if you need to see other nights just let me know! Some nights are better than others.

[Sleeprider]

Well the analysis is pretty darn easy, you have great results here! With a minimum pressure of 5.0 and maximum of 20 with EPR 3, your therapy range is actually closer to 9.0 to 14.0 cm. To the extent I recommend you increase the minimum pressure from 5 to 8 or 9 just to minimize all the pressure changes.  The flow rate is your breathing at mL/sec, but looking at the chart, we see very even respiration without a lot of spikes or unevenness.   This suggests fairly long periods of quiet good sleep, lack of movement, and disruption. Although there are 4 sessions here, that will consolidate as you adapt.  While therapy results are excellent, your tidal volume at 300 mL is on the low side of normal, depending on your size age and health, and your respiration rate is high at 26 bpm. This is not a cause of concern assuming you are a fairly small framed, and probably puts you at under 5'-2". 

Looking deeper into respiratory statistics, my guess would be that you experience upper airway resistance (flow limitation) that is causing pressure to fluctuate quite a bit.  Your second chart  and the 95% flow limit statistic, as well as inspiration time nearly equal to expiration time confirms this.  If you zoom into the flow rate chart, we will see flattened tops to the wave-form, and that shows that there is considerable respiratory effort to get the volume of air you need in a breath, and this is the root cause of low tidal volume and high respiration rate.  This will be most noticeable where flow limitation and snores are present.

From this chart, I recommend that you increase the minimum pressure, probably to 9.0, keep EPR at 3 and use the Autoset Soft mode to slow down the pressure changes.  These are great results, and the higher minimum pressure should lower the flow limitations, improve breath rate and maintain comfort.  The last point is that in your case, comfort trumps pretty much anything I might suggest. If the higher minimum pressure is difficult to tolerate, dial it back  until you can deal with it without a problem.  If we had a true bilevel, you would use more pressure support (difference between IPAP and EPAP) instead of minimum pressure,  but you are already at maximum EPR. Above all, remember the first sentence I wrote in this post. There is nothing to be concerned about.

[Aqualily]

I'm actually about 5'5" and a little overweight. Does that make a difference? Glad to see everything else is good though! My sleep doc told me that my sleep apnea is mild to moderate, not horrible but not great. He said it was just bad enough that I need CPAP treatment.