I am on day 23 of my sleep program. It occurred to me in this advanced technical age we should be able to have 100% repair each night for all the apneas that occur.
This much effort daily for some stoppage of apneas is questionable to me.
Comments please.

Unrealistic expectations.
For one thing some of the flagged events by the machine are going to be false positive or arousal/awake events since the machine can't even distinguish between asleep and awake breathing. It only measures air flow and nothing else. It has no way to know if we are asleep or not and if we aren't asleep then any reduction in air flow isn't a sleep apnea event.
Awake breathing is very irregular when compared to asleep breathing and these machines can and will flag awake breathing irregularities as some sort of apnea event so the likelihood of 0.0 events....pretty slim.
It can happen but it's not something we expect daily.

And the other thing is it's darn near impossible to prevent every single apnea event that is a real asleep event and it's not needed anyway.
Would you want to use 20 cm pressure all night just so the airway never even tried to collapse? Probably not. It's not comfortable and using a lot of pressure to kill all apnea events is likely to cause problems worse than a random apnea event will cause. So the cure is very likely a lot worse than the disease. Aerophagia would likely rear it's ugly head and then of course higher pressures might even trigger central apnea events which regular cpap/apap machines can't deal with and you would need a different machine which is a whole different beast and comes with a whole new set of complicating problems.

So to try to kill all events totally....very likely will create additional sleep issues that end up being a bigger problem than a random rare real asleep apnea event would cause.

Finally...you are like a lot of people who expect medical technology to be a perfect solution for all our health problems and the cold hard fact of life is that it is far from perfect. Nothing is perfect. It is improved but not perfect.

The only way to totally prevent any sort of airway collapse....ventilator.
Do you really want to go that route?

_________________
I may have to rise but I refuse to shine.

Pugsy, that is a very clear explanation of the process. I learned from your comments that machines only measure air flow and nothing else. And that Awake breathing being irregular is flagged on occasion. And I inferred from your comments that I am getting a great deal of help from my current process. Thanks.

Yeah, we don't expect perfection.
My own AHI usually runs between 1.0 and 2.0 but the bulk of it is more false positive arousal related flagging. I do a lot of tossing and turning and remember pain related arousals.
I have taken the time to go through all the flagged events and most of the time 75% of the flagged events are arousal related....so maybe out of 12 total events for the entire night only 2 of them will be real asleep related events.

2 events during the night that might last 20 seconds isn't going to hurt a person. We can usually hold our breath that long and it's just not a problem. The problem happens when we have way too many of those not breathing episodes and they are sort of back to back and happening within a short period of time. Random events aren't a problem and don't/won't cause stress on the body and won't cause desats.

Earlier this summer I had a night where the AHI was like 9.4....very unusual for me so I did take the time to evaluate the flow rate and examine each flagged event. 95% of the flagged events were awake related false positive flags. That night was a particularly bad night in terms of overall sleep quality due to back pain. I simply over did it with the gardening and yard work that prior day and I paid for it with increased back pain that night.

I don't often take the time to zoom in on all the events because I have done it so much over the years that I pretty much know what to expect and I also know that there's not a darn thing I can do about what might or might not have happened last night. It's water under the bridge and gone and can't be changed. Most of the time I might see 2 or 3 events over the entire night that might be real asleep events...they are short lived and scattered throughout the night. They aren't going to hurt me and I just shrug my shoulders and move on. I might have to use 18 cm all night long to prevent those 2 or 3 apnea events and it simply isn't worth it to me. I can pretty much guarantee that using 18 cm all night would cause me more problems than those 2 or 3 random events will cause me.

Your primary goal...good quality sleep and feel good during the day and not a good perfect AHI 0.0 math score which doesn't guarantee anything.

Not to mention it's entirely normal to have what we call a sleep onset central apnea which will get flagged. They are a normal part of life and aren't considered a problem unless we have a truckload of them. Nothing we can do about something that is normal anyway.

_________________
I may have to rise but I refuse to shine.

I get several sleep sessions, even weekly at times, that according to the machine and OSCAR I get 0 AHI. Not my goal but that's what is reported. 0 doesn't mean I feel better for it. I feel best with reported AHI between 2-3.

And to be a contrarian, I am going for a INIV ventilator. Why? COPD, a pulmonary nurse, and an RT says ASV is no longer the correct treatment. Mine is not the pursuit of zeros, but proper treatment.

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Pugsy,
How do you get more information about your flagged events. I just get three scores from Dreammapper. The AHI, Usage, and Mask fit %. Is there more data on my machine than these 3?

Not that I'm Pugsy, but using OSCAR, yes there's a lot more data than that. We can see very detailed chart data with it, and it's free. Use my signature link.

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Like DeltaBravo...I use OSCAR software.
I don't mess with the online software available which as you have figured out doesn't really show much detail.
I didn't even bother installing the app or registering my machine.

I took a lot of time to educate myself as to what the flow rate shows me and I looked and lots and lots of flow rate graphs over the years.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software

_________________
I may have to rise but I refuse to shine.

I had installed the Oscar software. I don't have a card reader for my computer. Or is there a bluetooth connection for Oscar.

No Bluetooth.

If you don't have a slot for the SD card on your computer then you need one of those adapters for SD cards that plugs into the USB port and you use it that way. WalMart or similar have them or order online. Amazon has tons of them.

_________________
I may have to rise but I refuse to shine.

I had to buy a USB card reader as the built-in one died on the PC. I got one for about $7 through Amazon if I recall correct.

That would be the easiest way to read the data, that is via a card reader, SD card, and OSCAR. There was a Toshiba wireless SD called FlashAir. There's some moderate programming to do to get it to work. Seriously, it'd be easier to get an any brand SD card in 2-32GB capacity in standard SD or SDHC and place it in your PAP to store data. Pop the SD out and into the SD reader on the PC to upload the file into OSCAR.

There's no other bluetooth or wi-fi capability for PAP that I am aware of, despite most PAPs having a wireless or modem card inside. These are for the DME to get data.

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Do you know what kind of SD card is in my Dream Station Phillips Respironics. Are they all the same size when I order a generic card reader on Amazon.

I went looking for slots on my PC and on my HP laptop. I found a slot on my ASUS desktop that says MMC SCSDHC. And on the laptop its a slot a little less than an inch wide.

The SD card is regular SD physical size, and is SD or SDHC as in capacity. Here is my SD from my ResMed, the accessory SD card reader slot, and them together.

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Is this my SD card?

Yep, that's it. Same shape like the clipped top right corner and the lock slider on the left. Yours just says PR on it. As long as that one works, these ones from the PAP makers are probably about 2GB capacity. It should hold about a years worth of data.

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Thanks Delta. Next challenge is to see if my machine is used by Oscar. I couldn't find the Dream Station Auto Cpap DSX500H11 on the list of devices. It probably can't hurt to try unless it erases the data on the card. And then I'm in big trouble with my provider.

Create a backup file on the PC, copy out your SD to it, and you've got a file just in case.

OSCAR compatibility:
Dreamstation CPAP & APAP

DreamStation CPAP (200X110) - limited, see note * below
DreamStation CPAP Pro (400X110, 400X150)
DreamStation Go (400G110)
DreamStation Auto CPAP (500X110, 500X120, 500X130, 500X150) This should include yours.
DreamStation Go Auto (500G110, 502G150)
DreamStation BiPAP Pro (600X110)
DreamStation Auto BiPAP (700X110)

_________________
Duct tape carrying K9; the tape helps quiet stupid.
Dave K9DWB 73s

https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Help
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php/OSCAR_Chart_Organization

Good idea. I'll see what I can do.

Success: I was able to back up my DreamStation SD card with Acronis True Image to my 1 Trig external HD. Then I had the Oscar app copy the information from the SD card without fear of data loss.
Everything was easy with all the help given here. Now I can start studying the information collected.