SPO2 as key OSA Bogeyman/Demon
8 months in (using ResMed 11 Autoset for mild to medium OSA at high compliance), I’ve questioned if it is doing me any good.
SleepU by Wellue has shown a hint at an answer. Sleeping with CPAP at night for me results in very few (or zero) SPO2 drops below 90%. Beginning of night or end of night sleep session without CPAP (CPAP removed or not started, yet used over 4 hours for part of the night), SleepU results show numerous dips into the 80s for SPO2.
Is SPO2 the key? And for severe OSA does SPO2 drop really low? 70s? 60s?
thx
** SPO2 being oxygen saturation in blood, for the minuscule # of people who may not know…
RE: SPO2 as key OSA Bogeyman/Demon
(08-04-2024, 07:04 AM)richapple Wrote: Is SPO2 the key? And for severe OSA does SPO2 drop really low? 70s? 60s?
Indeed, oxygen saturation is regularly used to confirm the success of CPAP/APAP treatment. At severe apnea or lung damage, the saturation goes below 80%, even 70%. Apnea devices can mitigate it up to a certain point, but you need supplied oxygen for really bad cases.
RE: SPO2 as key OSA Bogeyman/Demon
In a similar vein, I posted this a few months ago....
For anyone who is thinking of giving up on CPAP because of the nuisance......I tried an experiment this morning.
Background: I was diagnosed with sleep apnea just a couple of months ago and I've been on CPAP since then. I was a bit of a scientist in my youth so I have spent some time trying to understand all this apnea and oxygen stuff, and I carefully study the charts in OSCAR and SleepHQ every morning - trying to see how all the parameters interact with each other and relate to the sleep stages measured by my Apple watch.
As we all know, one of the reasons that apneas and hypopneas are bad for us (though there are others, which I will ignore for now) is that they can cause the oxygen level in our blood to fall to unhealthy or even dangerous levels. The CPAP machines typically don't give us any information about oxygen, and even the smart watches that do are apparently not very reliable, so I decided to buy a continuous pulse oximeter (an excellent 'Wellvue SleepU').
I've only had it a couple of days, but the detailed overnight data from it is so far showing that there are no signs of oxygen drop around the (occasional) apnea and hypopnea events recorded on my ResMed Airsense 10. My 'blood-oxygen saturation percentage' is typically 95-98% (which is 'good'), with very occasional brief drops below 95% (considered 'low' but not 'dangerous') - the lowest reading being 93% for just a few seconds.
So that's good - right? Does it mean that I don't really need the CPAP after all, if these events are not affecting my oxygen supply? I thought I would test that theory this morning. For the final 45 minutes of my sleep, I kept wearing the oximeter but disconnected my CPAP gear (i.e. the pillow mask AND chin strap).
During that time, my overall oxygen level was a little lower than it had been but - more worryingly - I had 3 brief drops to 91%, 90% and even 88%! That last one caused my oximeter to vibrate madly to wake me - as it did.
So it seems clear to me that the CPAP machine is doing its job well - it spots apneas and hypopneas in their early stages and quickly increases pressure to curtail them before they can affect my oxygen level. I guess I will learn to live with it!
