After much enticement by my wife, I told my GP about my loud snoring and my wife saying I “hold my breath� during sleeping. He scheduled me for a sleep study. The sleep study was a “split night sleep study.� During the study, after 3 ½ hours the technician woke me up and said I definitely had sleep apnea. I was then set up on CPAP starting out at 5 cm and was gradually increased to 7 cm (which was the maximum obtained).

The official results of the study were:

Pre-Treatment

% of sleep time spent in stages 1,2,3,4 and REM – 34%, 61%, 0%, 0% and 2%
with 3 central apneas, 70 obstructive apneas, 0 mixed apneas, and 195 obstructive hypopneas with an AHI of 91 per hour.


Post-Treatment

% of sleep time spent in stages 1,2,3,4 and REM – 9%, 61%, 3%, 0% and 26%
with 3 central apneas, 0 obstructive apneas, 0 mixed apneas, and 8 obstructive hypopneas with an AHI of 6.8 per hour.

The conclusions were severe sleep apnea with an AHI of 90 per hour and desaturation events down to 80 percentile.

My GP set me up to see a DME next week. I called and they provide a Goodnight 420G and have several masks to fit and choose from.

My questions are: I see most individuals with these high numbers being on much higher pressures. Since I still had an AHI of 6.8 at 7 cm, how is treatment normally adjusted? Due to the severity of my apnea/hypopneas will CPAP alone suffice? Should I be concerned about the centeral apneas?

Yo Zombie!
CPAP should be titrated to get an AHI of at least <5.0, and more like <3.0, so AHI 6.8 is still a bit high, probably should've tried 8, 9, 10 cmH2O CPAP to see what happens, the information could have been helpful.  You might ask your physician to just start you at 8, you do seem to be quite CPAP-responsive, as you noted.  Or try AutoCPAP, but that's probably overkill.  Or if you still have symptoms after you start CPAP (but going from AHI 90 to 7 should be like night and day) then kick it up 1 or 2 cmH2O.  Or if your wife observes periodic breakthrough snoring, add 1 cmH2O or so.  Or if you're overweight, losing some weight might slide you right in, too.  3 centrals, nah, probably just post-arousals (following movements, etc.)
sleepydave