Sudden Recent Jump in Events

[LamDai]

Hello! I recently found this board and it has been very helpful and informative. I got the OSCAR software set up last week and it is so helpful to know the details beyond just the AHI number.

I was diagnosed with severe OSA back in May this year and was prescribed the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet with pressure range 6-14 and EPR = 2, using nasal pillows (I have pretty bad sinus congestion but somehow these still work?). For the first couple of months I was doing fairly consistently, with AHI around 3. The summary stats show they were mostly Clear Airway events (no OSCAR data until late July sadly).

When I was on the range 6-14, the 95% mark was around 11. That range was giving me pretty bad aerophagia, so my doctor decreased the range to 6-10 (this was on July 17). Since then, the aerophagia has been a lot better, but I am wondering if the recent change in range is the reason for my increase in AHI.

In the past week, the AHI value has been mostly above 4, going as high as 7.78. I haven't seen 7 since maybe the second week I started therapy, so I am kind of concerned. I don't recall making any major changes to my sleeping arrangement, but I did muck around a bit with EPR (but for the past few days everything was changed back to how it was before these episodes started).

Any advice is appreciated, thank you!


July 21
   

July 25
   

July 29
   

[SarcasticDave94]

Welcome to Apnea Board,

Maybe I missed it, but are you aware you can change settings on your CPAP machine yourself? Get your CPAP setup manual for your machine.

https://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap-p...tup-manual

The pattern of the latter 2 charts looks like Positional Apnea. This is not sleeping on your back, side, etc. However, it's all about your head and neck alignment, placing them into a restricted airway state. Get an image of this: you're in your Lazy Boy recliner watching the news why you fall asleep. Your head flops forward, kinking off the airway while you're sawing a forest. Take away the recliner aspect, with the head flop aspect remaining. Do you do this in bed? OSCAR says maybe.

Since this is external, you'll need an external block, a soft cervical collar to prevent this from happening. Look this Positional Apnea up in the wiki. If this sounds like you, consider the collar.

https://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph...onal_Apnea

[Hardhead]

I received my AirSense 10 in August , replacing my 20 yr old Respironics RemstarPro C-Flex, and after self-titrating to a reliable 1.5 to 3.5 AHI range, I  then experienced a fairly rapid adverse trend in my AHI numbers as we shifted from Summer weather to Fall heating season. 
What I first tried was a slight increase in max pressure from 6.8 to 7.0 and I began to use the humidifier, but to no good effect.
I found that being too cool or too hot while sleeping had adverse AHI effects so there was some playing with the covers and thermostat to reach a comfort consensus with my partner.
But the AHI numbers were still climbing to 5 and above most nights.  What finally restored control over the AHI numbers was to use the bedroom overhead fan on low speed.
I have no idea why this was helpful other than it probably enabled me to reject excess body heat more effectively. 
The primary type of event driving the numbers higher was hypopnea.  Obstructive Apnea was virtually non-existent and Central Apnea only seemed to occur just before I fell asleep or in conjunction with lying in bed while waking up.
I did find that it was better not to use EPR since that drove the OA number up visibly.
The only recommendation I would like to make is to-experiment-experiment-experiment when things begin to go adversely.