Posted by cjm36 on December 02, 2002 at 14:46:56:

In Reply to: Advice: No OSA, but UARS? posted by Jake on December 02, 2002 at 06:19:32:

Jake, I'm glad and interested to read your follow up. I responded at least once to your posts in the 105 forum. I have the same problem (UARS)as you do and was interested to hear you bought a GK418P and tried it. You failed to mention if you now have the software packages for both machines(?) or are just reading the results from the displays? I know it's very frustrating to determine if those UARS events are being responded to. I have some suggestions for you to try, but remember too, that even if any machine responds well to your events, it only puts out more pressure, and not a magical dust that cures all of our sleep problems. In other words, you may only get so good on CPAP. But try these things: are you experimenting at all by changing the mode on the Spirit or the GK from auto to CPAP only? By using a constant pressure, you could cover most of your events, but of course, would be at a higher average through out the evening. If that doesn't help, you need to start doing some high quality home recording of your respiratory noises during the evening. Go out and buy a good tie-clip microphone from a electronics retail store. Then, get your VCR moved to your bedside and set it up as a high fidelity recorder (most VCR's do a surprisingly good job of this in 6 hour mode). You can do this by changing the input to AUX and feeding the mic to the input (don't worry about any video signal input...it's not needed). Now also, hopefully, you've got a dedicated microphone input to the VCR. If not, you'll need a small preamp to feed to the RCA jacks line level(buy this preamp at that same retail store). When you're ready to go to bed, tape the tie-clip mic directly to your throat about an inch of either side of your Adams apple. Start the VCR recording at pretty much the same time you start CPAP. Now then, if you have that software and can print night studies with the Spirit or the GK, you'll have the perfect time index to match up recorded events and recorded sounds during the six hours of tape. You WILL hear a slightly different sounds when you're having respitory events (hopfully, they'll be good and clear). Get a good set of head phones and diagnose these sounds from the VCR tape. Deeper sounds are almost always from the throat area and nasal sounds are from your nose and sinus obviously. What kind of sounds are you having? If they're throat sounds, you may want to seek a qualified dentist to make you an oral appliance. If they're nasal sounds, you'll probably have to consult a ENT surgeon about nasal contouring of some sort.

In summary, I think CPAP can only do so much for some of us. If it isn't helping completely, everyone has to consider the other two established options for treatment (oral appliance or surgery). I hope I've been of some help. I'd love to hear responses from others to the original post by Jake or what I've said.

Chris

Follow Ups:

• Re: Advice: No OSA, but UARS? - Sleepy Coote 18:29 12/02/02 (1)
  • Re: Advice: No OSA, but UARS? cjm36 17:22 12/03/02 (0)
• Re: Advice: No OSA, but UARS? Jake 15:15 12/02/02 (0)

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