Just diagnosed with significant sleep aponea

[DaveBryan39uk]

Hi everyone I have just been diagnosed with significant sleep aponea and my consultant told me I had forty seven dips per hour, I dont understand what that means (can anyone help) he also says now that I need a CPAP urgently and he will rush the appointment with a chest specialist as soon as he can. I have already had two rhino-plasties but neither worked now I find my daughter is going through the same already having one rhino-plastie. I have been told that it can be heridtary and that OSA is mainly found in obese people and also people of an older age group I am 47 and my daughter is 25 and we are both of a slim build. Can somebody tell me whats right and whats wrong please as I am so confused.

Thanks
Dave B

[James @ Intus]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for joining!

47 an hour means this...

...on average, every one minute and 15 odd seconds, you completely or almost entirely stop breathing. Your air intake gets reduced to such an extent that your lungs don't get any in, so they can't extract any oxygen from it either. The oxygen then drops in your blood. Your body starts to panic, kicks in a dose of adrenalin to make the heart go faster, in a bid to squeeze out more oxygen from what's left in the blood. Your heart rate goes up and the adrenaline causes a micro-arousal, or in other words, causes you to momentarily wake up. So short that it's enough to make you breathe again but too short to remember.

That cycle can go on all night, for 10 years without you knowing you wake up every minute and a half or so. Needless to say, you don't get much quality sleep. You can sleep for 10 hours a day and feel like someone who hasn't slept at all.

CPAP will act as an air splint, much like a car jack, to keep the airway open. You can then breathe through your throat unobstructed, reach deep sleep without heart pounding, without low blood oxygen.

If the rhinoplasty is for ensuring breathing, as oppose to cosmetic, please consider sinus irrigation. If your nasal passages are narrowed already, they get inflamed faster and close off even more. This will make OSA worse, or cause CPAP pressure to have to be higher. By ensuring your nasal passages are inflammation-free, you ensure you get the most of your narrow airways, with minimum discomfort and minimal need for a higher CPAP pressure. As the distributors of the SinuPulse Elite, I have heard more thna once that people either called off their nose op as they didn't need it anymore, or that they found pulsatile sinus irrigation worked much better than what the operation had to offer.

Let us know if you have any further questions. It's a lot to take in!

[ElleCee]

Hi James,
Thanks for explaining that to Dave, I now undetstand what is going on with me! It all makes sense now.
Can you please also tell me what 'non compliance' means? I have seen it mentioned on here and I think my doctor said it, but he didn't explain, and it went right over my head (literally )
It is easy for people that know about it all ,to presume that us newbies know what is being talked about, but I for one doen't have a clue!
Some people sign their name and have all these figures by it, I am guessing they are significant in some way but again I am clueless.

I do now understand some things like.......
Ramp - period of time taken to get machine working to full (set) pressure

errr....ok, well I know one thing! LOL

Thanks for all the help
Lorraine

[James @ Intus]

The NHS seems to call somebody compliant when he or she uses the machine for 4 hours a night and/or has an improved Epworth Sleepiness Scale.

Now, thinking about it from an accounting point of view, the more people compliant, the better your service. So if you call over 2 hours use compliant, you can safely say 99% of people are complaint. If you call 6 hours a night complaint, that drops to 60%. Compliance and funding are probably closely related.

Compliance for yourself should be at least "maximum use of CPAP" and "feeling much much better". Aim for all-night use, every night. The moment you don't wear CPAP, and the underlying reason for OSA isn't taken away, you get your apnoea episodes I described above back again.

[DaveBryan39uk]

Thank you James and sorry its took so long to answer but I have not been well.
Could I please ask you another question ? My consultant Mr Hargreaves (ENT Specialist at Royal Bolton General Hospital) also told me that because I have significant obstructive sleep aponea that it could cause me to have a stroke or heart attack. Why is this and how? I would really appreciate your answer as you seem very knowledgeable in this type of illness.

Thank you
Dave B.

[BigFrank]

Heart Attack & Stroke

I work with a co-worker who's mom has had two storkes they now believe is due to her osa. She has an RDI of around 45, and desats to about 75% on a PSG study.

What I was told is that due to oxygen not getting into the lungs during apnea and hypopnea events, it is causing the brain to get too low on oxygen in the blood and causes the stroke.

What I heard about the heart attacks is that people with sleep apnea are at hiigher risk for them too. Reason being, the oxygen stops flowing during apnea events like normal. Once the airway is cleared up, the heart realizes it needs to start pumping like crazy once again to get blood back into the body. This causes the pulse rate to skyrocket, and if someone has 30-40 events per hour for example, this can be happening to the heart all night long. Combine this with low oxygen levels to begin with and its a recipe for disaster. will be interesting to hear what james says