Struggling Newbie

[TheAndyyManCan]

Hi there,

I've been on CPAP therapy for about six weeks and I am really struggling to bring my AHI down to acceptable levels. I was diagnosed with 18.8 AHI but I am now getting results closer to 30 each night. I have tried to experiment with different pressure settings but to no avail. I have included a screenshot of last night's data from OSCAR. If anyone has any suggestions, I would really appreciate it. I am absoluely exhausted and my symptoms are really effecting my life and my work.

Thanks in advance.

[staceyburke]

You are having positional apnea.  You can see positional apnea where either H or Oa events are clustered together.  Getting rid of as many as you can will lower your AHI.  Positional apnea can NOT be controlled by pressure changes.  You have to find out what position you are getting into and cutting off your own airway.  Have you changed your sleep position?  Sleeping on your back?  Using more (or new) pillows?  These things can cause positional apnea by chin dropping to your sternum and cutting your airway.  Think of it of a kinked hose – nothing can get through – you have to unkink the hose…

IF you can’t make a simple change like changing to a flatter pillow helps then you will need a collar.  I have a link to collars in my signature at the bottom of the page.  It shows people who are not wearing a collar and the SAME person wearing a collar.  There is a huge difference between the two.

[TheAndyyManCan]

Thank you for the reply. I did suspect this when noticing that the pressure changes are not having an affect. I'm going to try sleeping with one less pillow (I normally sleep with two but have recently gotten new pillows which are much bigger than normal) and maybe sleeping with a scarf as I don't have access to a collar just now. Hopefully will finally see some results.