[Treatment] My S9 machine has a setting called Easy Breathe -- what is it?

[justMongo]

I cannot find a definition of "easy breathe" -- one of my setup parameters.

When set to "on" the rise time setting is grayed out.
When set to off, the rise time is variable; and defaults to 300.

Anyone know where I can find this ResMed term defined?

[zonk]

Have you checked the manual, I don,t know about VPAP Auto setting but the easy breathe based on the autoset EPR easy breathe

[robysue]

Easy Breathe setting controls how your VPAP changes the pressures from IPAP to EPAP and back.

I'm working from memory here and I may not have all the details correct. But here's what I remember about Easy Breathe from when I was still using an S9:

When Easy Breathe is set to On (the default), the actual pressure level delivered at the mask has a characteristic "wave" shape that "rounds" the transition between EPAP and IPAP as well as controlling when the pressure starts to drop. The Resmed advertising for both the S9 AutoSet with EPR and the S9 VPAP talk about the "Easy Breathe" technology and they are (almost) the same.

When Easy Breathe is turned Off, there is a "sharper" corner to the pressure curve caused by the machine increasing the pressure when the inhalation is detected. And the Rise Time setting controls how rapidly the machine will increase the pressure from EPAP to IPAP once the start of the inhalation is detected. The Rise Time setting is probably measured in 1/1000ths of a second. So the default Rise Time setting of 300 means that it would take the machine about 3/10s of a second to increase the pressure up to full IPAP pressure once the start of the inhalation is detected.

With Easy Breathe turned ON, the pressure curve will look something like this:


With Easy Breathe turned OFF, the pressure curve will look more like this:

Note that with Easy Breathe set to ON, the transition from EPAP to IPAP is smoother (no sharp corners), but the pressure starts to increase ever so slightly sooner. The Rise Time setting controls how long it takes to go from the corner in the curve to the peak pressure at the top of the wave. (The red lines drawn on the curves in both figures are at the same point in the breath cycle; also this picture shows how the pressure adjusts automatically on a VPAP Auto in response to snoring or flow limitations that are not shown)

Note: These pictures were posted on another forum a long time ago when I and another poster (a sleep tech) got into a long, thoughtful, and very educational thread about the differences between how the Resmed S9 AutoSet with EPR set to 3 increases the pressure for each inhalation vs. how the PR System One BiPAP increases the pressure for each inhalation. They feel very different to me, and I am in the minority of people who do NOT find the Easy Breathe pressure wave very comfortable because I notice that subtle increase in pressure and it makes me feel like the machine is rushing me to inhale before I'm ready to.