Apnea watch

I have a sleep apnea appointment in a week’s time, at Papworth. As a result, I have just downloaded data from my AutoPAP, to prove I remember how to do it – I will do it again the morning of my appointment.

The geek factor of this machine is wonderful. I made the decision a few years ago to buy my own machine, which is why I have to download and print reports, rather than give them the machine and let them do it themselves. But the detail is incredible, including both summary information and drill-downs to individual nights.

autopapI am not a doctor, but to my eye, it looks fairly good. Average nightly sleep is a low 6 hours (remembering that this is sleep wearing the mask – I do have a tendency to tear it off in the hour or so before waking up), and a rate of 2 Apnea–Hypopnea events an hour. This is good – when untreated, over a decade ago, it was 20+ per hour, which meant I wasn’t getting any useful sleep.

I do notice that the auto-control of the air pressure is hitting the maximum set fairly frequently, so I will remember to ask if I need to raise this a bit – the idea is that the maximum is what the doctors say I need to stop my apneas, but this smart “auto” machine reduces the pressure when it can tell by my breathing that I don’t need it, only increasing it when an apnea occurs; this makes it much more comfortable to use. So if the machine is hitting the max, we may need to increase it.

One Comment

  1. chris
    May 11, 2015
    Reply

    For anyone with apnea who is interested, the machine is a DeVilbiss SleepCube AutoAdjust Plus.

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