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No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - djrem3000 - 06-02-2017
Hi,
I'm new to apnea and oximeters. Just bought CMS50i a few days ago for self-studying and recorded a full few nights.
The problem is - i'm living in Lithuania (Europe) and the are no qualified free apnea doctors in our country. The queues to the very first free consultation are endless. I have booked a meeting/consultation with the doctor ( without any lab testing, consultation only), and should wait for a half a year now
) queues are endless as i mentioned. Of course there are paid medicine insurance present, but most of the people cannot afford it.The reason i bought the oximeter and planning to buy the CPAP machine - i'm suffering from breath stop at night like most of us, but i'm not sure the reason of it. Is it apnea or asthma or etc. My first prediction is - apnea.
So my problem (breath stops at night) is present for more that 15 years already, and i even get used to it, but only now after so many years i have decided to learn and to self study my problem, as it started to really bother me.
Here are my results for one night attached (another night results are similar).
According to (PDF attached - report.pdf) these results (Index 1/hr=3.5, no SPO2 < 91%) but still some SPO2 desaturation increments (more than 4%) i believe i can make a conclusion, that i have a mild apnea.
Am i right ? Do i need a CPAP machine in my case ?
Please help with any advices!
Update: attaching another PDF of the night 2 - report2.pdf
It seems that results are a bit worse than night 1.
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - dmeRT - 06-02-2017
based off of the index of 3.5 and no SpO2 <91%. I wouldn't worry about sleep apnea. if the index was >5 or SpO2 was <88% then further testing would be needed(sleep lab visit).
But IMO, based off of the limited data of the overnight ox. your numbers look fine to me.
again, just my opinion.
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - Marillion - 06-02-2017
Your oxygen data does look good. But Sleep Apnea can occur without significant oxygen desaturations. Oxygen desat events are just one indicator. You may be having many other apnea related events that are disturbing your sleep. The bigger question is how are you feeling during the day? Are you feeling sleepy at various times, having trouble concentrating in the afternoons...need coffee to stay awake later? How do you feel in the mornings? Do you need to wake up numerous times to urinate in the middle of the night?
Make sure to keep your appointment, since as we all know time passes very fast indeed and it would be best to get a sleep lab diagnosis to rule out the fact you may have sleep apnea. If not sleep apnea, then you need to be assessed for what else may be troubling you during your sleep.
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - PaytonA - 06-02-2017
How have you determined that you have breathing stoppages at night? If you have asthma your doctor should have detected some indication during a normal check-up.
If you have breathing stoppages of over 10 seconds during the night the chances are good that you have sleep apnea regardless of whether your oxygen level desatuates. This can be disadvantageous to your health in the long run because the apneas keep you from attaining level 3 or 4 sleep as well as REM sleep all of which is where the restorative sleep occurs. Much of the restorative sleep occurs during level 3 and 4 sleep so not getting much of those sleep stages means your body does not recover as well as it should.
Best Regards,
PaytonA
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - quiescence at last - 06-03-2017
in general agreement with these other responses, and you may have to rely on someone you know to listen to you as you sleep, or have a camera on you while you sleep. do you stop breathing, and then have thrashing body and deep quick and full breathing or gasping? see my example where there is a gap in my sleeping with the CPAP machine, but still record with my oximeter (blue line and red line). My SpO2 is also not below 88% without the machine, but is much worse than my apnea once corrected by therapy.
![[Image: cMzh8jx.png]](http://i.imgur.com/cMzh8jx.png)
notice that I also had apnea events even when in pressure therapy 1 obstructive per hour and about 2.5 hypopnea per hour.
oh, you have apnea.
QAL
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - djrem3000 - 06-03-2017
(06-02-2017, 06:10 PM)Payton A Wrote: How have you determined that you have breathing stoppages at night?
I'm waking up everytime i stop breathing/gasping, then starts a fear to die and i start to inhale the oxygen very quickly.
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - djrem3000 - 06-03-2017
(06-03-2017, 12:52 AM)quiescence at last Wrote: see my example where there is a gap in my sleeping with the CPAP machine, but still record with my oximeter (blue line and red line).
Yes i can see it, but while there is a gap in you reathing, i can see, that you SpO2 level is starting to constantly jump and to decrease in overall till the 88%. Yes, it is still not more than 88%, but it is somewhere around this value.
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - ajack - 06-03-2017
from your both charts, there was one reading of 89 for one moment. I really wouldn't concern myself about apnea, you still need to see a doctor to chase down not breathing and waking up, but the o2 desaturations aren't bad.
this chart is a bit messy
![[Image: AbjmK72.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/AbjmK72.jpg)
RE: No decent apnea medicine in my country, please help with results interpretation! - quiescence at last - 06-03-2017
during the two nights you recorded, you did not have desaturation that brought you below 88% a magical line that generally signals cell damage. some other night, perhaps. Since you were gasping, it is a good indication that you have significantly disrupted sleep due to breathing halts, and therefore apnea. In you second night, I count about 7 times when heart rate increased a lot and this indicates arousal, your "awake at rest heart rate" is probably about 65, so these upper 70s to lower 80s readings indicate stressful awakenings.
Is it milder than mine or Julie's - yes. Does it disrupt your sleep - yes.
I would talk it over with the doc.
QAL