Annie's Sleep Study

Annie had a sleep study last week.  She's had several over the course of her life, but she had this one to try to figure out why she wasn't tolerating her CPAP very well anymore.  Several months ago we got her fitted for a new mask, but it didn't seem to help at all.  Annie was a champ getting all set up for the study, but the night was horrible.  They tried various CPAP pressures as well as various BiPAP pressures.  She didn't like any of them, and still had a fair amount of apnea on both systems.

Since high pressures from CPAP and BiPAP can cause central apnea (apnea from no obstructions, but from messages being sent to the brain to stop breathing), our pulmonologist suggested we do an at-home oxygenation study to see what Annie's O2 levels are doing in the night while just on room air and no breathing assistance.  If her O2 sats don't dip below 90% too often, or stay there too long, they may discontinue night-time breathing assistance, otherwise, they will transfer her to BiPAP which seemed to produce the least number of apnea episodes.  It was a rough night of listening to the pulse ox machine beep every time she dipped below 90%, but by the time Justin could get in there to turn off the alarm, she had already recovered on her own up to 100%! We don't have all the data back yet, but we're hoping that since her O2 levels were recovering so quickly with each apnea episode that we can discontinue breathing assistance at night.  Annie tends to get higher quality sleep without it lately, so fingers crossed!