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I am very hesitant on having any kind of surgery including the Inspire implant. I have read post here on the forum of people who has had it and it almost sounded like they wished they hadn't had it. You also mentioned other tongue restraining devices and was wondering what were they. Right now I am on IPAP 15 and EPAP 11 with PS on 2 which is the setting you suggested 2 1/2 years ago that worked great till now. Should I increase both or just IPAP and should I increase PS?
Well looking back through this thread your best results by far, were with EPAP min 13.0, Max Pressure 17.0 and PS 4.0, so I think there is a lot to be said for higher pressure in your case, and you seem to have already proven it.
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Thanks Sleeprider. I will try those settings again and hope it helps. I went to a new sleep doctor recently who is an ENT thinking she might want to do a DISE to take a look at my airway but she didn't bring it up so I didn't either. She said she would like to do another titration study on me though.
Since this apparent problem in my airway started last year causing my AHI to go up, I have tried different things to help mediate the problem because I know that if I go to an ENT sleep doctor, they are going to find some problem that they will say require's surgery and I have decided against that. So last month I decided to go to a Lifestyle Medicine doctor to help me with some other health issues that I am having. During the discussion, she asked about my sleep and I mentioned the problem I was having. She asked if I had tried a wedge pillow and I told her that I am a side sleeper who has to turn from side to side all night because of shoulder pain on both sides and that wouldn't work for me. Then she mentioned raising the head of my bed up about 6 inches to see if that would help. She even had a diagram of it in her book. So I tried it and it has helped alot. I went from my AHI averaging over 5 to now 2.79 for the past month and this past week it has averaged 2.4 with a low one night of 0.9. So I am making progress. Over the last year I have experimented with lots of different pressure combinations and PS settings. Please take a look at my charts to see what I could do to help my sleep. I know on the night I had the 0.99 I felt very good the next day whereas today after having a 2.81 I am feeling very tired. I do still have some positional OSA's but nowhere as bad as they use to be. I have thought about raising my bed a little higher to see if that would work even better but I am already drifting towards the foot of the bed now during the night. On the zoomed in screenshot, it appears to me that my breath's are falling off pretty quickly after the peak of inspiration. I need some help in trying to get my pressures and PS reset to better help me sleep now that things have changed.
Mark, I used to use a collar for positional apnea but didn't find it comfortable, so I decided to try something else. I bought a child-size pillow (they are always flatter) that has a raised front and back portion. This keeps my head tipped slightly back and solved my positional apnea completely. My pillow is no longer made but I have seen some on Amazon that might work the same way. Here's a link in case you are interested:
Thanks. I think I will give the pillow a try and see if it helps. I was hoping I could get someone to take a look at my recent graphs to see where my settings need to be. Like I had mentioned, I have tried many pressure combinations and PS settings and I am just trying to get it set back where it needs to be. Most of last year 15/11 PS 2 was giving me a 0.9 AHI average until things changed. Now I don't know where I need to be. I have noticed that whenever I raise my EPAP setting or reduce my PS setting my EPAP 95% keeps going up. Does that mean I need to keep raising my EPAP a little higher?
