Sorry - I posted this originally in the wrong forum!

I got my results. I do so hope that someone here will be able to help me decipher these:

Summary: sever sleep apnea with apneic hyponeic index of 34.1

Patient slept a total of 489 minutes in bed of which 402.5 minutes were sleep, for a sleep efficiency of 82.3%. The sleep latency was as 66 minutes and the REM latency was at 136 minutes.. The total time awake after sleep onset was 20.5 minutes. During the night there were 404 arousals and 14 awakenings.

Patient spent a total of 5% of the sleep in stage 1, 67.3% in Stage 2, 8.2% in 3/4 Delta, and 19.5% in REM.

Breathing: 229 episodes of respiration disorder breathing which resulted in arousal and/or oxygen desaturation of 4% or more. These episodes consisted of 138 obstructive apnea and 91 obstructive hypopnea for and apnea index of 20.6, hypopnea index of 13.6 and combined apnea of 34.1. The mean duration of the apneas were 23.2 seconds and the longest apnea of 34.1. The mean duration of the apneas were 23.2 seconds and the longest apnea was 47.7 seconds. Most of those occurred in the supine position.

Oximetry: awake = 95%. Asleep = 95% and lowest asleep was 79%

EKG= no arrhythmias.


Can anyone out there shed any light on this stuff for me??

Laura

Hi Laura,

Your sleep efficiency at 82.3% is actually pretty good for a sleep study. Sleep architecture is not really all that bad either. Stage 1 is normal at 5%. Stage 2 is pretty high at 67.3; normal is 55%. That's likely where your low stage 3 and 4 came from, but many people never achieve any stage 3 or 4 during a sleep study. Normal stage 3 and 4 is 20% Your REM is pretty close to normal.

Your oxygen desat to 79% is of concern, but cpap should take care of that if you were titrated properly and the AHI is cut down to normal.

I am wondering about all the arousals. You show 404 arousals, but 229 respiratory events. Is there any mention in the report of periodic limb movement or restless leg syndrome?

As the report states, you have severe sleep apnea. You show some fairly long events at 34.1 seconds for an apnea and 47.7 seconds for a hypopnea. (I wish my numbers were as good as yours). I think I remember that in your first post you stated you rarely sleep on your back. As most of your events were on your back it's probably good to avoid it if you can.

That's about the best I can do. Hope it is helpful. BTW...how do you like that Swift?

Brian

Thanks for answering, Brian!

No, no leg movements. I'll have to dig the results back out and check the number of respiratory event - maybe I typed it up incorrectly. I do remember that the arousals was definately 404.

Can you tell me what AHI is? (Still learning the lingo!)

Yes, you're right, the night of the test I was on my back all the time, which is abnormal for me. I never sleep on my back, except maybe when I fall asleep on the couch, etc. I go back for a second test next Wednesday and I am going to sleep on my side come hell or high water so that next time it will give them a more accurate example of my sleep. Wish I'd done that before.

I am still just stumped at how I could have such sever apnea and not know it, not have any dramatic symptoms. My hubby has been watching me sleep for weeks now because he was losing so much sleep over what was making me cough so much (they started out looking for stuff like pulmonary fibrosis!) and he insists that he never saw or heard me stop breathing. And while I'm tired during the day, I'm not THAT tired. Oh, well.

I do much prefer the nasal pillow! It is much less bulky and cumbersome. I can wear my glasses and watch tv in bed! It was a little odd at first having things going into my nostrils, but it's not really bothersome. I barely feel the air getting pushed into my nose with the pillow, so it is a lot more comfortable for me. I'm really glad I changed because all the skin around where the nasal mask used to be is now dry and flaking off - how attractive! But the skin where the pillow touches my upper lip is fine so far.

Just for comparason, what were your numbers? How sever is your apnea?

Laura

Hi Laura,

AHI is apnea hypopnea index. The 2 are added together and then averaged out. IE: if you slept 4 hours and had 160 apneas and hypopneas combined, your AHI would be 40.

I really don't understand why they made you leep on your back the whole night. For both my studies, I was allowed to sleep however I wanted. During my titration study the tech did come in about 3 am and ask me to try on my back for a while. They do that as back sleeping is usually the worst case scenario and they want to titrate you for that. But the whole night is asking a bit much, I think.

You know, I never realized I had apnea either, although since my diagnoses we think I have had it for more than 30 years. I was a pretty active guy until I was maybe 48 or so when I started to notice I didn't have as much energy. Just chalked it up to getting older. 2 years ago I got very ill all of a sudden. Extremely violent headaches, dizziness and no balance. I got so bad so fast my GP was pretty sure I had a brain tumor. After 8 months of hell, about a million dollars worth of testing and thousands of dollars in medication, my wife said "tell the doctor you stop breathing in your sleep".
And here I am. It was all due to untreated sleep apnea. I never once had "excessive daytime sleepiness". BTW she had told me that several times over the years and I just thought "yeah well so what. I feel great".

My AHI was 51 on my side and 81 on my back. I had several oxygen desats down to 69%. There are folks on this board that have numbers far worse than that.

I'm glad you're getting along with the Swift. If you start to develop any tenderness in your nares; some Ayr gel or some chapstick usually helps a lot. Good luck with your next sleep study.

Brian

Generally, back sleeping causes more apneas due to the weight of the neck closing the airway.  It is an anatomy issue.  Most of us try to sleep on our backs then roll to our sides when we cannot get enough air, it is a type of self medicating.  The tech told me to try to stay on my back as he will get the "worst case scenario" and true reading on the equipment.  They know that our bodies will automatically try to compensate for the apneas, they want to see what happens when we don't use positioning as a fix.  They know that it will get better on our sides, generally. Not everybody is the same.

Hope this helped.

kcttiger wrote:

Generally, back sleeping causes more apneas due to the weight of the neck closing the airway.  It is an anatomy issue.  Most of us try to sleep on our backs then roll to our sides when we cannot get enough air, it is a type of self medicating.  The tech told me to try to stay on my back as he will get the "worst case scenario" and true reading on the equipment.  They know that our bodies will automatically try to compensate for the apneas, they want to see what happens when we don't use positioning as a fix.  They know that it will get better on our sides, generally. Not everybody is the same.

Hope this helped.

Thanks for the info. That makes sense. I was told to stay on my back because of the wires hooked up to me. I use sleeping on my side as a fix, so my numbers were high (AHI of 80.61) I thought I got about 45 minutes sleep, but the machine said otherwise.

On the CPAP, at up to 7 cm, my AHI was 3.1 so I am really loking forward to getting my CPAP and getting some sleep for the first time in many years!