Apnea Forum Posting

Posted by Terry Joe on July 11, 2000 at 06:12:21:

In Reply to: How is severity determined??? posted by Micki on July 10, 2000 at 20:11:59:

That is severe sleep apnea, much over 40 events per hour. I agree with Gary on that number. The idea of all this stuff is to get your numbers down to under 4 per hour if at all possible. Some control subjects also have some of these events, however, having a large number over time can damage the heart and other organs, you will remain sleep deprived and you will NOT have the more restful stage 3 and 4 sleep and your REM may also be negatively affected. Pressure is determined basically impirically, that is, the question is what pressure of air is required to keep your airway opened? That depends a lot on the physical and physiological nature of the blockages and when they occur. My own pressure is high, it takes a good deal of pressure to keep my airway open, but I sure sleep like a baby when it IS kept open during the night. :-) Even very serve sleep apnea can respond very well to CPAP or BiPaP therapy and in fact, it is the best therapy currently available. I know about the tendancy to look at the numbers. I think a more productive thing is to see just how LOW you can get your numbers with a good CPAP or other machine prescribed for you, how to get a good mask and USE it regularly, how to get humidification IF you need it and how to monitor your progress with treatment. These are things that YOU can participate in the process. The idea is to have your machine respond in a proper way to these "events" that occur LOTS of times every hour, ALL NIGHT LONG. You want to severely reduce or eliminate them, to provide you with the restful sleep you really need. You want in the process to minimize or eliminate entirely any damage to your heart and other organs as a result of this cessation of breathing during the night. You might need another sleep study later to see how you are doing, to adjust your pressure as needed, especially if you lose (or gain) a lot of weight. If you had 78 apneas and 427 hypopneas and you can reduce them to a total of 20 or 10, or even 4, you have done a tremendous amount toward your own good health. It is very important for you to give feedback to your doctor about how you are doing and any problems you are having, if any. He or she is not a mind reader and they really need your comments and observations to give you the very best treatment. You can read over the stuff on your machine so you know how to use it properly, you can become informed by reading and going online on this forum. It is clearly better when the patient participates in the process and the outcomes are often much better. I was getting up about 2-3 times a night to go to the bathroom to empty my bladder. Yeah, all 2 ounces of it. What I did not know is that a signal is produced during deeper sleep telling you your bladder is NOT full, that is, it serves to turn off "false alarms". I was thinking, gee, I got prostate troubles already. Not. When I started CPAP, and went to the bathroom just before going to bed, as usual, I got up just ONCE in 20 nights!!! Now explain that for me. What I am saying is your breathing process during the night affects all kinds of things, everything from sensing if your urinary bladder is really full or not to your heart beat regularity and muscle damage to the heart and other major organs. The point of all this is that these events can be greatly delayed or prevented alltogether by CPAP and BiPaP therapy. Don't worry about the numbers, try to see how LOW those suckers can go for you, WAY down, and see yourself how much better YOU feel every single day.

Follow Ups:

• Re: How is severity determined??? Micki 11:01 7/11/00 (0)

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