Quackdoctor (Therapy Thread)

[Quackdoctor]

Hello everyone! I'm new to the forum and in hopes of getting some help with my sleep apnea. I have both obstructive and central apnea. When I went in for my annual check up in March I had a Nurse Practitioner review my results. He asked how I was doing with my sleep therapy to which I replied I was doing great. He looked at my printout and and said no, your not doing good at all, your AHI is too high. He jacked up the pressure on my machine and sent me on my way. I tried for five weeks to live with these settings. The worst five weeks of my life. Mask leaks, noise from machine and closed nasal passages had me awake every hour. I felt like a zombie all day. I finally made changes to my pressure settings and finally got the sleep I had been missing. I returned to the Doctor after two months and met with a different Nurse Practitioner. After explaining the situation to her, she agreed with me that the well being of the patient was more important than a slightly elevated AHI. She had the technician return my machine settings to the original settings.


After joining the Sleep Apnea Board and installing Oscar I've found some results that cause me to believe that my machine is malfunctioning from time to time. There are some nights where the machine only records data for 40 min. and shows an extremely high AHI. It records apnea's and hypopnea's during times that I'm awake and breathing normal without obstructive airway. My humidifier works when it wants to which isn't often. I use my machine every night and should have 100 percent compliance, yet the printouts show varying percents of compliance.


I would like to tweak my pressure levels to improve the AHI, but until I resolve the intermittent results from the machine I don't know where to start. I have an appointment with the Head Doctor at the clinic later this month. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
[attachment=43244]

[Dog Slobber]

Show the a screen shot of the Daily page on a night where you believe it's not working correctly and a Daily page where it's working well.

[Quackdoctor]

   

   

Daily screen shots.

[Dog Slobber]

As odd as it sounds, recording events while one is awake is perfectly normal. The device doesn't know whether you're awake or asleep, it just records events. Awake breathing can often be erratic and volatile, this may create false positives. A second source of flagged events can occur during transition from wake to sleep, sleep onset apneas. Perfectly normal. 

Now, the huge AHI calculation and short recorded sessions is very strange.

You're on a very old version of OSCAR, the first thing I suggest is upgrading to 1.4.

I *suspect* the nights your AHI is wildly high it's a data problem. On the nights that your AHI is wildy, how many events did you have (represented in the events tab). 

Does you OSCAR stats reflect what the machine reports on screen, or threw dreammapper.

I suspect OSCAR is doing the math based on the short session time but using the number of events during a much longer session.

Upgrade OSCAR, possibly re-import the data into a new profile.

BTW, turn off the calendar and event breakdown on the left so all the machine settings and summary can be seen.

[staceyburke]

Your first graph shows only 20 min with a huge amount of events that do not show up on Your event chart.

Try posting again the full night.

[Quackdoctor]

Ok, the new version of Oscar got rid of all the wild readings. It now looks like a normal machine. Thanks for your help. I'm going to start a new thread with current screen shots since this one didn't garner much interest. I still want to try and lower my numbers.

[clownbell]

The mods want you to PLEASE keep all your stuff in one thread. That way they have the full picture of your history. Do NOT start a new thread. Yes they can merge them, but that's just extra work for the mods. Better to have them spending time helping people.

[Crimson Nape]

Besides what clownbell said, we can always rename this thread to better reflect your intent.
- Red

[hh9797]

While I see you got your issue resolved, just wanted to say that events while you are awake is perfectly normal in the sense that an event is an event and the machine can not tell if you are awake or asleep, when I am just about tired enough to sleep or just waking up I often catch myself forgetting to breath for upwards of 30-40 seconds before I go "hmm something is off, oh I am forgetting to breath let me correct that", even though I am not asleep at that time as far as the machine is concerned it is an event because it doesn't know wither I am awake or asleep it just knows hey the breathing stopped without a major pressure change indicating the mask was removed and as such must be an event because you are not breathing while the machine and mask are on. As such having events happen while you are still awake doesn't mean the data is wrong per say because you can have an event while still awake, if the machine is on and the mask is on it is recording the data doesn't matter if you are asleep or awake.

[Quackdoctor]

OK, I'm hoping to get some helpful advice to improve on my therapy.