CPAP anyone?

[jen-cueva]

Hi @brendad53, we have had several discussions about CPAP and BIPAP in the forums. I just tagged you in one of them.

I can’t help much because I only use oxygen, no CPAP or BIPAP. When I did my sleep study, my O2 drooped, but I did not have apnea. This is why I was told oxygen at night was sufficient for me.

I have heard of others who use CPAP /BIPAP and did notice some improvements. Hopefully, others will respond that you may find helpful.

[brenda-denzler]

I looked for some discussions, Jen, but only found one. I may have missed something. Thanks for the leads.

[jimi-mcintosh]

I was on a Cpap for 5 years and I experienced some improvement when I moved from the Philips unit to a different brand, my events went from 30 to 10’s. Last Sept 21,after another sleep study I was migrated to a Bipap and my events went up drastically to 30-50 events per hour andI averaged 3-4 hours sleep per night. Finally a year later a wise respiratory tech discovered that the machine was setup wrong and in 15 minutes, my events avg’d 4. /hr and I finally achieved 6-8 hrs sleep, “as the old commercial said, pop pop feeze feeze, OH WHAT A RELIEF IT IS”, my oxygen use went from 4 to 3 liters at night.

It took over 2 years to get a proper diagnoses of PH, 2 years of experimentation with different meds to settle on Adempas and several blood pressure. Meds. Re-evaluated, at Emory Medical and told that I have “Pulmonary Vascular Hypertension and the expensive meds that I took for 10 years were no longer necessary and new regiment consist of popular blood pressure meds.

Health  now includes dialysis, COPD, asthma, bronchitis, fatty liver disease and continuous breathing issues. I am on oxygen at night, fatigued, and suffer anxiety. Currently being evaluated for kidney transplant.

[brenda-denzler]

Interesting, Jimi. My last sleep study (June 2022) said I had moderate obstructive sleep apnea based upon the test readings of my O2 sats. The study said I had above 90% sleep “efficiency” and slightly higher “sleep maintenance efficiency.” In October 2022 we discovered that I have a systemic problem with oxygen exchange, at all times. Waking and sleeping. So I’m questioning whether what we saw on the sleep study was 100% apnea problems and not, rather, O2 exchange problems.

Your experience with the CPAP tells me that improvement may be a while in coming, even if I get one. I have learned that mask fit is an important factor in how well CPAPs work. Your experience indicates that brand of machine may be a factor, AND how the machine is set up may also be a factor. Several variables in play, here.

Thanks for sharing all of that with me. I need info like that to make an informed decision based upon not just CPAP-makers’ hype and not physicians’ rotely applied response to “sleep” and “breathing” if uttered in the same sentence, but based upon real-world experiences of those who use them.