CPAP causes nasal congestion

[Deborah K.]

I have had regular congestion for many years due to anatomical oddities. I had surgery which helped a little, but mostly I just have to live with it. Using a pap machine has not made it any worse. I take Mucinex before bed and use a spray of Flonase before masking up. I sleep largely on my back. That position helps any drainage run unnoticeably down my throat. Maybe this would work for you.

Best of luck with whatever you try!

[davidcmoors]

Being able to analyse sleep data in more detail, via Rescan in my case, was beneficial.
I was troubled by early awakenings. I was able to attribute many of these to long obstructive apnoea which coincided with waking early, caused by a blocked nose. (Nasal pillows mask).
This issue only started when I changed my Resmed S8 Autoset for an Airsense 10 with climate line tubing. It's standard SD card enabled me to use Rescan to view my detailed data.

With the S8 and the humidifier set to about 75% of maximum, the water chamber would be about 10% full at the end of a typical night. I was not much troubled by early awakening with that CPAP, nor by a blocked nose at night.

I was surprised to find that with the Airsense 10 and humidification level and tubing temperature set to auto, the water chamber would always be 50% full at the end of a night, and I would often wake early with a blocked nose, or at the usual time with much more nasal dryness than with the S8. Experimenting with manual humidifier settings, I found that with humidifier set to 6 and tube temp to max, the problem was reduced but not eliminated, and the water chamber would be nearly empty.

Coincidentally I had an ENT appointment for an unrelated issue and discussed this with the surgeon. He indicated that my nasal turbinates were enlarged, one side more than the other, and might contribute to a blocked nose if CPAP temperature and humidity were not optimal. I finally (after several cancellations due to COVID lockdowns) managed to arrange turbinate reduction by RF ablation. This was a painless and quick outpatient procedure, and effective after a 3-4 week healing time. Since then I've had almost zero awakenings due to un-supressed respiratory events.

[Sleeprider]

It would be really interesting to see before and after OSCAR graphs to see the difference.