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Well I've been on CPAP for a couple of months now, using the ResMed S8 Escape provided by the Oxford Sleep Clinic. While the machine is using latest technology it is a bit on the basic side and doesn't provide any sort of information on how things are going.
For about a week or so I woke up feeling tired again so thought I'd take the opportunity to have a go with an APAP to see if I could figure out what was going on.
I contacted ResMed in Oxford and had a chat with them to arrange the rental of an S8 Autoset Spirit II, I handed over 50 of Her Majesty's finest Pounds Sterling and they handed over the machine for a month.
I've only been using the machine for 3 days now but have run into a couple of difficulties.
First thing I've noticed is that breathing seems a lot noisier than with the Escape. The Escape creates a constant noise level as the air is forced into the mask and after a few minutes you just tune that out. With the Autoset there is a different noise level every time that you take a breath and I'm struggling to get used to that.
Despite severely fragmented sleep I woke up the first two mornings feeeling not too bad, this morning I woke up feeling like a horse had kicked me in the chest and my lungs have felt as if I'm struggling to get air into them all day.
Having looked at the stats the Autoset can provide (a novelty since the Escape doesn't do anything that fancy) I've noticed the following:
Day AHI AI HI Pressure
Sat 7.9 0.2 7.7 13.2
Sun 11.3 0.6 10.7 15.1
Mon 13.5 0.6 12.9 17.9
The machine came set with no ramp, a minimum pressure of 4 and a max of 20. I noted when I first tried it that it started pumping the pressure up even when I was awake and breathing normally, this makes me think that as my normal breathing is quite slow and shallow that the machine thinks I'm going into hypopnoea all the time and reacts accordingly. I suspect that this is what happened last night and that the machine was running full pelt for quite a while.
I've now changed the max to 15.4 and I'll give it a try for another couple of days but methinks that it will be back to straight CPAP for me.
On the positive side my mask in an excellent fit with a leakage rate of 0.02!
To all you APA users out there,is this a typical start to using an APAP?
I'll keep you posted on any progress.
For about a week or so I woke up feeling tired again so thought I'd take the opportunity to have a go with an APAP to see if I could figure out what was going on.
I contacted ResMed in Oxford and had a chat with them to arrange the rental of an S8 Autoset Spirit II, I handed over 50 of Her Majesty's finest Pounds Sterling and they handed over the machine for a month.
I've only been using the machine for 3 days now but have run into a couple of difficulties.
First thing I've noticed is that breathing seems a lot noisier than with the Escape. The Escape creates a constant noise level as the air is forced into the mask and after a few minutes you just tune that out. With the Autoset there is a different noise level every time that you take a breath and I'm struggling to get used to that.
Despite severely fragmented sleep I woke up the first two mornings feeeling not too bad, this morning I woke up feeling like a horse had kicked me in the chest and my lungs have felt as if I'm struggling to get air into them all day.
Having looked at the stats the Autoset can provide (a novelty since the Escape doesn't do anything that fancy) I've noticed the following:
Day AHI AI HI Pressure
Sat 7.9 0.2 7.7 13.2
Sun 11.3 0.6 10.7 15.1
Mon 13.5 0.6 12.9 17.9
The machine came set with no ramp, a minimum pressure of 4 and a max of 20. I noted when I first tried it that it started pumping the pressure up even when I was awake and breathing normally, this makes me think that as my normal breathing is quite slow and shallow that the machine thinks I'm going into hypopnoea all the time and reacts accordingly. I suspect that this is what happened last night and that the machine was running full pelt for quite a while.
I've now changed the max to 15.4 and I'll give it a try for another couple of days but methinks that it will be back to straight CPAP for me.
On the positive side my mask in an excellent fit with a leakage rate of 0.02!
To all you APA users out there,is this a typical start to using an APAP?
I'll keep you posted on any progress.
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