- The other day, I said that
C-PAP titration studies were a little bit of a
scam.
And a few of you picked up on that comment.
And just ask me to clarify what I meant by that.
So for those of you that don't know,
a C-PAP titration study is normally
used for those of you on fixed
pressure machines,
where your machine is set to one set pressure.
And back in the day,
they're still doing them now.
But back in the day, you'd go into the hospital.
They'd wire you up
And then throughout the night,
you'd have someone sitting there,
a sleep scientist, a sleep tech
manually adjusting your C-PAP pressure
throughout the night to find
the best pressure to control your sleep apnea.
And the reason I think is a little bit of a scam is,
a, you can kind of do it yourself now.
You really can. The machines have all the data
you need,
to be able to adjust your seatbelt pressure
When you need to.
But b,
setting your C-PAP machine to one set
pressure based on such a small sample size,
that being one night
in an unfamiliar bed, in a hospital or lab
with all those wires over you,
with someone watching your sleep,
is not a great way to determine your pressure
because the truth is
your pressure requirements change every night.
Is very rare to find a night where your pressure
requirements will be exactly the same.
And we'll head into the office now,
and I'll show you some real data
from an auto set machine, an automatic machine
that shows you exactly what I mean by this
All right. Let's do it
- Okay. So for this example,
we're quickly going to look at three nights
of consecutive C-PAP data
from the 6th to the 8th of September.
Now on the 6th, you can see the C-PAP pressure.
This is the pressure changing over time,
and it's changing due to sleep apnea.
So if the person is having sleep apnea, it goes up.
If their breathing is good, it comes down.
But through the night,
the pressure changes cause they're on an automatic machine.
Now the max pressure for this night,
if we look over here was 15,
it's capping out up here.
You say it's a capping out of 15.
And if we go to the 7th,
which is the night after on the Tuesday,
the max was only 14 here. 14.14.
You can say, it's not capping out,
but the pressure is changing again throughout the night,
got up to go to the toilet here,
pressure changing.
If we go one more night to the 8th,
the pressure's now below 13, 12.8,
right?
Once again, it's changing throughout the night.
So on three consecutive nights,
three different max levels.
So you can clearly see from this example,
if you went in for your hospital titration study on the
Monday, the 6th,
you're probably walking out with a C-PAP set to 15.
Yet two days later, if you went in on a Wednesday,
you're walking out with a C-PAP set of 13,
two centimeters of difference.
And that is quite a big difference when
it comes to C-PAP pressure.
And most of the time,
what I find is
when you go in for those lab studies,
those titration studies,
90% of the time they're over titrated.
The people walk out with C-PAP machines set with the
pressure too high.
That's what I find.
And that's the beauty of an auto machine
is that it varies the pressure minute by minute
throughout each and every night
So you get this really lovely tailored therapy.
And you also end up with an average pressure that's
much lower
than if you were to set the pressure up at
these peaks, which is what they'd probably do
if you were sitting in a set pressure.
There's all these times throughout the night, here, here,
here where you don't need all that pressure.
You only need that high pressure.
A couple of times throughout the night here, here, here,
and the goal for me
as a C-PAP tech
sleep tech, is to get the pressure as low
as possible because it helps with all
these leaks.
And it also helps make the therapy
much more enjoyable to use
it's much quieter, less side effects.
Anyway, guys, let me know what you think.
I do encourage you to learn how to adjust your own C-PAP
pressures, how to read and understand the data,
which will guide you on how
to get the best night sleep as possible
Take care, have a great weekend
and I'll see you soon
Bye.