[Treatment] Is AHI a true indicator of sleep quality?

[hegel]

Long REM sleep is the gold standard for me. My throat and neck muscles relax deeply in such sleep. As a result, I'll have more apnea/hypopnea events. So my AHI is higher on nights of long deep sleep (but still fine!); whereas on nights when sleep is shallow with lots of wakenings, my AHI is usually lower. I'll take the higher AHI and deep REM gladly every time.

[Shin Ryoku]

Long REM sleep is the gold standard for me. My throat and neck muscles relax deeply in such sleep. As a result, I'll have more apnea/hypopnea events. So my AHI is higher on nights of long deep sleep (but still fine!); whereas on nights when sleep is shallow with lots of wakenings, my AHI is usually lower. I'll take the higher AHI and deep REM gladly every time.

How do you know which nights you had long REM sleep?

[monuoha]

Interesting post. I'm also new to all things CPAP and my AHI's are between 1.2 to 5.5 but yet i'm waking up still feeling foggy and tired.

[tmoody]

For me, sleep duration is as important, or more important than AHI in terms of how I feel the next day. There are some days when I get just 7 hours of sleep but my AHI is 0.3. That's an excellent AHI but I need more than 7 hours to feel well rested.

For some time now I've been experimenting with the theory that my ASV machine actually interferes with sleep to some extent in order to keep the AHI low. I don't know if this is actually true but I do feel better with the machine manually set to a particular BPM rate than I did with it on Auto. My suspicion is that Auto was simply too aggressive in micro-managing my breathing. But this is just my own guesswork; I don't know of any real evidence to support it.

[Sleepster]

AHI is used by researchers to classify patients into groups so they can do research on them. Of course, we use it for more than that, but I think that is it's original purpose.

[hegel]

"How do you know which nights you had long REM sleep?"

I remember my dreams, or dreaming; and I sleep through three full hours or more at a time, which is my typical REM cycle. 

Or, I have a restless night with only one or two hours of sleep cobbled together through the night. These are nights when I'll almost always have a great AHI!

[chill]

AHI is used by researchers to classify patients into groups so they can do research on them. Of course, we use it for more than that, but I think that is it's original purpose.

That.   Is all that it is generally useful for.   It is a crude yardstick for dividing groups for research purposes.  It is generally useful in that most people with an AHI of 5 will feel worse than most people with an AHI of 1.