SPO2 Diagnostic Criteria

[YouTakeMyBreathAway]

My SPO2 drops >4% throughout the entire night. While my AHI is <5 most nights, SPO2 drops are consistently more frequent than that.

Is there any diagnostic criteria that would make me qualify for ASV? My current machine is not marking the hypopneas, but clearly I am breathing too shallow to keep my oxygen in the 90+ range, given the frequent dips.

The 4%+ desats was both confirmed on multiple nights  with the lab’s oxygen meter and my Wellue O2 Ring.

[Jeff8356]

Could you post one of your graphs with your cpap and SpO2 data?

A 4% desat is not abnormal throughout the night.  For context, if your Sp02 is 98 and drops 4% gives you 94 which is still in a good range.  The amount of desats can vary greatly for different reasons.

I find that my desats rarely correspond with my apnea events.  And can range from 20 desats to over 130 (or higher) for the night.  Many of them are quick spikes that are likely me bumping the oximeter sensor while moving in my sleep. 
I found that increasing my pressure slightly also helped keep my SpO2 above 90 for a while now.

If your SpO2 is consistently 88 or below then you may be a candidate for supplemental oxygen and should discuss it with your Dr.

Have you checked your SpO2 while you were awake and moving around?

[YouTakeMyBreathAway]

My SPO2 very rarely drops below 88%, it is maybe a once a night occurance. That being said, my baseline is 96% or 97% for most nights and it drops to 90-92% pretty much all the time (i.e. 20+ times per hour)

I have noticed that whenever I do have a night with a long ~1-2h stretch of 95%+ saturation, I feel super refreshed the next day. Unfortunately that happens roughly once a week only.

I understand that I probably do not qualify for supplemental oxygen since my oxygen is not frequently below 88%, but really craving any other available solutions.

[Jeff8356]

I know certain medications can have a profound effect on treatment.  I recently stopped taking one particular medication at night and my baseline went from 91.5 to 94.7 regularly so that was a good change.

Start keeping a journal.  Take careful notes on those days you feel great.  Everything from what you ate, drank, did, times you went to bed, etc.  You may find that it is as simple as something you eat that helps (or hurts).

[Gideon]

What are your settngs? Don't forget EPR. Your profile states 4-20 which means yo were never optimized.
EPR will increase the deepness of your breath and likely provide a slight boost to your O2 levels but your charts will tell us where you are, including your current settings, vs your profile data which is only manually updated.

One thing that sets apna board apart from other forums on sleep apnea is that we prefer to suggest based on data, and not to guess what may be going on

[YouTakeMyBreathAway]

My latest data can be found on this thread, which I update periodically: http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-...-CA-events

[YouTakeMyBreathAway]

I just woke up with my lowest AHI yet since starting treatment (1.58), but at the same time one of my highest SPO2 drops/h (6.34) and feel extremely tired. I started reading some text and kept having to re-read sentenced 4-5 times because I'd forget them.

What could be the problem here if not CA/OAs?

   

[kappa]

OSCAR's SPO2 drop number isn't that meaningful - it uses some "unique" logic there. What does O2 Insight Pro report as the ODI3% and ODI4% numbers?

I don't see any Sleep Study report in any of your threads. Did your sleep study look at PLM and other factors?

[YouTakeMyBreathAway]

My sleep study did not look at PLM; I did an at-home study w/ a chest and abdomen strap, as well as nasal canulas and pulse oximeter. It detected 17 hypopneas/h.

I wasn't aware of OSCAR's unique logic. Just downloaded O2 Insights Pro, for the last 3 night I got these values:

ODI3%: 11.7/h, 22.9/h, 14.4/h
ODI4%: 5.2/h, 10.0/h, 7.8/h

Unfortunately can't get any older data it seems, since it only allows me to load from the device, not from the stored files.

Any advice on what I could do next to help with this?

[kappa]

You could try increasing your minimum pressure to see if that helps. You could also experiment with different EPR levels. Do you live at a higher elevation?