Sierra

Either program should work fine. At this point they are nearly identical. OSCAR may be improved in the future, but SleepyHead development has stopped.

What you are mainly looking for is the impact of pressure on the frequency of your central apnea events. There are two basic strategies followed to deal with central apnea., and a third if the first two fail.

1. Minimize the pressure to as low as you can. The idea is to have the pressure high enough to reduce the obstructive apnea to acceptable levels without causing excessive central apnea events. It helps with this strategy to NOT use EPR or the FLEX feature which puts a differential between inhale and exhale pressure. It also seems to work best to have the machine in fixed pressure CPAP mode so the machine does not push pressure up too high in Auto mode. I would not discount this method if you have not already tried it. Most BiPAP machines can be put into the CPAP mode, so this would be any option to try if you have not already done it.

2. If that fails then there are BiPAP machines that put a higher pressure split between inhale and exhale, which sounds like where you are now. Some machines detect that you are not attempting to breathe and will cycle the pressures to try and help you breath.

3. If neither of these approaches work, then the last resort is an ASV or Adaptive Servo Ventilation machine. These take the breathing assistance one step further and monitor each breath you take and on a breath by breath basis assist with pressure.

Hope that helps some. If you post your SleepyHead Daily report I may be able to suggest more.

Getting the right mask is often the most difficult part. Assuming you will get a chance to trial different masks, take full advantage of that opportunity to see what works for you. There are some things you can do to set up the machine for the most comfort. Do you know what specific machine you will be getting? If you can post that, I may be able to give you some tips.

To run SleepyHead of OSCAR which is a bit more recent version you need a PC or Mac computer with a SD card reader. You transfer your data from the card reader to SleepyHead. Then you can view the detailed data on SleepyHead. With a PC you press the F12 key and it will save a screenshot when you have the Daily Report displaying. Watch where this file is saved, and then left click and drag it to the body of a post here. It should look something like this. What you are looking for is some relationship between pressure and the incidence of central apnea events. This is one of my earlier nights when I was having more trouble meeting the AHI of 5 target. I also suffer from central apnea. You mention having a titration test where they got AHI below 5. Do you know what the recommended pressure was from that test? It would be helpful.

Some time ago I saved this link on how to disable the ET Call Home modem in the AirSense 10, thinking I might want to do it someday to protect my privacy. I never have, so can't comment on how accurate this link is in how to take the machine apart.

With those kind of numbers it seems that your BiPAP is not working for you or perhaps is not set up properly. My suggestion would be to download SleepyHead and have a look at your data in more detail. If you need help with that, just post the Daily Report screen here for comments. This branch of the software has stopped development, but it still works. It is the one I am using.

What kind of numbers were you getting with the CPAP machine?

If it is totally dead, the power supply is the most likely cause. You could try wiggling all the connectors. My wife's S9 machine had a problem with a DC to DC converter that she was using when we were in our RV. It turned out to be a loose wire inside the connector that fits into the machine. It was not independently replaceable, so the whole DC to DC converter was replaced under warranty. When you go for your appointment get them to try a new power supply first to see if that fixes it.

Sleep clinics are unlikely to have SleepyHead. However they should have manufacturer supplied software like ResMed's ResScan. They should also have somewhat similar software used for the interpretation of sleep tests and titration tests.

I believe the technical definition of an apnea event is 10 seconds or more. However certainly less than 10 seconds can be recorded. See the example from SleepyHead below. There are three events in a row. The first is a central (CA). You can see the machine cycling the flow rapidly after about 6 seconds of no flow and there is little response on the mask pressure. That is how the machine tests to see if the airway is open or closed. In the first event the pressure response is minimal so it gets classed as a CA. The second event is classed as a obstructive apnea (OA). The flow impact on pressure is greater. Then there is a third event which you can tell is obstructive because of the pressure response, but it is not flagged because it did not last long enough. But you can still see it easily if someone is looking. That is what someone should be doing in interpreting your sleep report. But, the bottom line is that stopping breathing for a few second happens all the time to everyone. That is probably why they put a 10 second minimum before an apnea is reported. Otherwise there would be hundreds of apnea events reported in a normal person's sleep.

I am not a medical professional, but from my understanding of sleep apnea it is not in my opinion a good assumption that your onset apnea is central in nature. It could be, but it is just as likely or even more likely that it is obstructive in nature. If you were susceptible to central apnea then it should have shown up in your sleep lab test for apnea. Your lab test was mild obstructive apnea, so that suggests it is more likely obstructive apnea. But, like I say, that is just a non professional opinion.

The used of sedatives like Ambien for a sleep apnea test is not all that uncommon. If anything sedatives promote central apnea, not prevent it. So, for that reason they should have detected the central apnea in the lab test if it really is a problem.

I'm not really sure what you are saying about the vacuum being created. All masks that I am aware of have a pretty significant sized vent near the nose or mouth. If the machine shuts off you can still get air into the mask through this vent, so it seems unlikely you could get a vacuum.

MyAir just reports very basic summary data. If everything is OK with your machine and your apnea results it is probably fine. The overall score is quite meaningless because of the way it is weighted. And it can very optimistic in the leakage rates. Unless you take your SD card into a clinic and have someone knowledgeable to review the data in the same detail as SleepyHead, there is little value in them looking at the MyAir limited data.

Last night my hose came disconnected. Here is what it looks like in SleepyHead. Looks like the hose came unconnected at about 6:23 AM and I figured it out and reconnected it about 6:30. It went back into the AutoRamp and I went back to sleep to get a few more zzz's about 8 minutes later.

I have had no virus issues or warnings with the SleepyHead version which I downloaded here. Have not tried OSCAR.