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Autopap update

Posted by adjusted on March 02, 2006 at 15:56:55:

Well, so much for sleep studies. When I went in for my retitration, the sleep tech said that my pressure of 8 was no longer sufficient to stop the apneas. I had gone in for retitration due to bad morning headaches. He said he stopped the apneas with a pressure of 12.

Now, mind you, I usually go to sleep at 10 p.m. and get up around 6 or 7 a.m. When I had my sleep study, I didn't finish getting hooked up until 11:30 p.m., and I was awakened at 5 a.m. saying my study was finished. So, in my mind, I really didn't get a full night's sleep, by my standards.

The sleep doctor called the next day and said the results of the retitration showed that my pressure should be increased to 10. I said that the sleep tech told me he went up to 12, but the doctor said it showed I needed 10. I still had bad morning headaches with a pressure of 10, so I called back again. The sleep clinic then lent me an autopap, and guess what? My pressure ranged from a low of 6 to a high of 17.5!!!! So my doctor suggested I increase my cpap to 16. I preferred to get an autopap instead, which I just got last night.

But to me, this suggests that maybe a one night study (and a short night at that) does not show a true evaluation. And the use of the autopap for one week gave a very different picture.

And by the way, with a doctor's letter of medical necessity, my insurance is paying for the autopap with a heated humidifer. I still had a substantial ($300 or so) co-pay. (They billed insurance for $1600). But, since ordering the machine from an online company would have been about $750 plus tax, this seemed like a good deal for me to use insurance.

So, maybe those at-home studies are really more accurate than the night at the sleep clinic!

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