Excessive Exhale Pressure

[revoshift]

I'm new to the Sleep Apnea world and have been struggling for the past few months to get used to my Resmed Airsense 11 machine. I tried various nose-only masks but the pressure caused air to flow out of my mouth like a river. Tried taping, but it was too uncomfortable. I then went to a Philips Dreamwear Full Face mask and it began to work for me. I wore it for several weeks with good results. Then suddenly, I'm either imagining it or it became very difficult to exhale through the mask; Like trying to breathe out of an N95 mask. My provider switched me to a Resmed AirFit F30 mask. Indeed, the inhale and exhale are both almost effortless. However, the mask is terribly uncomfortable and leaks like crazy.

I'm struggling to figure out what might be happening because I went for several weeks doing pretty well with the Dreamwear mask. I've tried different sizes, so I know it isn't a single mask. My machine is set to 4-20 pressure, with EPR of 3. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[staceyburke]

You setting EPR 3 (exhale pressure relief) and min 4 do not work together. Let me try to explain.

The absolute min any pap machine is 4 - it just can not go lower.

EPR is subtracted from the min to get the exhale pressure. But you can’t have a min 4 - EPR 3 that would be 1 and again 4 is the lowest it can go.

I would suggest you try min 7 EPR 3 which would give exhale of 4.

Also we can’t help much without seeing data. We use Oscar to get that date. It is totally free at the top of the site. There is a link on charts in my signature and it gives info on OSCAR.

YOU WILL need a SD card if your machine does not have one. Any size 4 gb to 32 gb. Get the cheapest you can find.

[SarcasticDave94]

Welcome to Apnea Board,

First thing, for EPR, which is exhale pressure relief, to work you need to adjust the min pressure up. EPR is attempting to drop your setting of 4 by the setting of 3. This it cannot do, the CPAP has a default low pressure of 4. So unless the min pressure 4 is increased to 7 it won't do its full pressure relief.

Secondly, you can view your own data with OSCAR a free report tool for your PAP. It's helpful to know the therapy data in detail because almost every CPAP user needs to self advocate their therapy with info.