Personal Care, Inc.
Personal Care, Inc.
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Frequently Asked Questions About CPAP

What is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep Apnea is a breath­ing dis­or­der. The Greek word “apnea” lit­er­ally means “with­out breath.” There are three types of apnea: obstruc­tive, cen­tral, and mixed; of the three, obstruc­tive is the most com­mon. Despite the dif­fer­ence in the root cause of each type, in all three, peo­ple with untreated sleep apnea stop breath­ing repeat­edly dur­ing their sleep, some­times hun­dreds of times dur­ing the night and often for a minute or longer.
 
What are the symp­toms of Obstruc­tive Sleep Apnea (OSA)?
The most com­mon symp­toms of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) in adults are loud snor­ing and exces­sive day­time sleepi­ness. Almost all peo­ple who have OSA snore, but not all peo­ple who snore have OSA. Other signs and symp­toms of OSA include: episodes of not breath­ing; Rest­less toss­ing and turn­ing dur­ing sleep; night­time chok­ing spells, sweat­ing, and chest pain; wak­ing with an un-refreshed feel­ing after sleep, hav­ing prob­lems with mem­ory and con­cen­tra­tion, feel­ing irri­ta­ble and tired, and expe­ri­enc­ing per­son­al­ity changes; morn­ing headaches; heart­burn or a sour taste in the mouth at night. 

Peo­ple with Sleep Apnea may exhibit onset high blood pres­sure, unex­plained weight gain, depres­sion and other health conditions.

What is the most com­mon treat­ment for Sleep Apnea?
The most com­mon treat­ment for Sleep Apnea is CPAP, or Con­tin­u­ous Pos­i­tive Air­way Pres­sure (CPAP), ther­apy. There are sev­eral dif­fer­ent types of machines for Pos­i­tive Air­way Pres­sure (PAP). Treat­ment involves a PAP machine and a mask.
 
What is a CPAP Machine?

CPAP stands for Con­tin­u­ous Pos­i­tive Air­way Pres­sure. A CPAP machine deliv­ers a con­stant flow of air into your mask, at a con­stant pres­sure deter­mined by your doc­tor, to open your air­way, and deliver air to your lungs. With a CPAP sys­tem, you must exhale your air back thru your mask and against the pres­sure of the CPAP. For most sleep apnea patients, this can be uncom­fort­able at first, but eas­ily adapted to within a few weeks. How­ever, some patients, espe­cially those at higher pres­sure set­tings, still have a hard time adjust­ing to their machine. For those patients, some of the man­u­fac­tur­ers have devel­oped a fea­ture on their machines that slightly lessens the air pres­sure when the patient exhales. The machine’s pres­sure slightly decreases at the begin­ning of the exhale cycle, which makes the ther­apy more tol­er­a­ble for many patients.

What is a BiLevel or BiPAP machine?
A BiPAP, or BiLevel has two dif­fer­ent pres­sure set­tings; one for inhala­tion (IPAP) and one for exha­la­tion (EPAP). The machine pro­vides the inhala­tion pres­sure, and then switches to a lower pres­sure dur­ing exha­la­tion.  BiLevel machines are some­times required by patients who have rel­a­tively high pres­sure set­tings and find it uncom­fort­able to exhale against the pres­sure. Also, some patients have under­ly­ing con­di­tions like weak chest wall mus­cles or COPD that make it dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to exhale against higher pressures.

What are the ben­e­fits of adding humid­i­fi­ca­tion to CPAP therapy?

Many peo­ple who are pre­scribed a reg­u­lar CPAP reg­i­men end up suf­fer­ing from dry­ness and con­ges­tion in their nasal pas­sages and throat, sore throats, and even nose bleeds. This is caused by the dry­ing effect of the pres­sur­ized air mov­ing across the mucous mem­branes. Humid­i­fi­ca­tion can help by adding addi­tional mois­ture to the air that trav­els into the lungs. The addi­tional mois­ture can help com­pen­sate for dried out nasal and throat tis­sues, pre­vent­ing the prob­lems men­tioned above.
 
How do I know which machine I need?
First you must find out if your doc­tor pre­scribed for you a CPAP, Auto-Titrating CPAP (APAP), Bi-Level (BiPAP), or an auto-titrating Bipap (Bipap Auto). The type of machine your doc­tor chooses for you is based on the infor­ma­tion they received from your Sleep Study. If you are unsure, please ask your doc­tor why he chose a par­tic­u­lar type of machine for you. 
 
I am get­ting exces­sive water con­dens­ing in my mask and PAP tubing. Is there any way to stop this from happening?
“Rain­out” is the term that is com­monly applied to this con­di­tion, and it is usu­ally caused by mois­ture con­dens­ing from the warm, moist air mov­ing through the rel­a­tively cool breath­ing tube. Some pos­si­ble solu­tions to this prob­lem would be to make sure that the humid­i­fier is not posi­tioned at a level above the patient.  Some­times, sim­ply turn­ing the humid­i­fier set­ting down slightly will cure this, or rais­ing the tem­per­a­ture of the room a lit­tle bit. You may also try heated PAP tubing that allows you to adjust the temperature of you CPAP and humidity at the same time. 
 
What is a nasal mask?
A nasal masks seals around the entire nose and is held in place with straps, or head­gear. ** Please Note — if your mouth comes open at night-you may need to use a chin strap (a strap that goes under­neath your chin and fas­tens on top of your head-this helps to keep your mouth closed) or a Full Face Mask (a full face mask cov­ers your nose and mouth)
 
What is a full face mask?
A full face mask seals around both the nose and mouth and is held in place with straps, or head­gear. Full face masks are used for ‘mouth breathers’. For some peo­ple the mouth tends to drop open unknow­ingly dur­ing sleep. This allows the treat­ment pres­sure (what your machine pres­sure is) blow­ing through the nose with use of a nasal mask to escape through your mouth, which means your air­ways are not held open by your pre­scrip­tion pres­sure any longer. The full face mask allows you to con­tinue to receive your ther­a­peu­tic pres­sure because your nose and mouth are cov­ered and you are not los­ing your pres­sure. Some­times nasal block­ages like a com­mon cold or those who have nasal con­ges­tion due to ill­ness or aller­gies might also need a full face for con­sis­tent treat­ment.

What are Nasal Pil­lows or Nasal Cushions?
Nasal pil­lows sit right at the entrance to your nose (your nos­trils). They don’t go in far, they form a gen­tle cush­iony seal and are held in by a formed head­gear. The cush­ion does not fit over the tip of the nose or rest on the bridge.

A nasal cush­ion goes around your nose and seals over both nos­trils and is sim­i­lar to the nasal pillows.
 
Does every mask work with every machine?
Yes-every mask works with every machine. They are made to be universal to go with any PAP machine. How­ever, always read the man­ual that comes with your machine and mask for up to date infor­ma­tion on com­pat­i­bil­ity issues machines and talk to your Respiratory Therapist.
 
Does every mask fit on my tubing?
Yes, every mask is made with a uni­ver­sal fit to your tub­ing. Occa­sion­ally, we hear that peo­ple are hav­ing trou­ble get­ting their new mask on their old tubing-it is almost ALWAYS because a piece of your old mask is stuck on the end of your tub­ing by mistake.

Is my tubing able to work with any machine?
Not always. If you are using heated tubing for you machine you will need to correct tubing for your PAP machine. If using nonheated tubing, these are univeral to use with any PAP machine. 
 
How often will insur­ance pay for new sup­plies for my CPAP?
Medicare and most insur­ance will pay for new sup­plies as follows:
Nasal and Full Face Masks 1 every 3 months
Head­gear 1 every 6 months
Tub­ing 1 every 3 months
Nasal Pil­lows/cushions 2 every 1 month
Full Face Liner 1 every 1 month
White Dis­pos­able Fil­ter 2 every 1 month
Non Dis­pos­able Fil­ter 1 every 6 months
 
Do I have to take my machine with me when I travel?
The answer is yes.  Check with your doc­tor to deter­mine if trav­el­ing with­out your CPAP is safe.
 
Can I use my machine if I travel out of the country?
Yes. Some machines are made to han­dle 100 to 240 volts. Those that do not have this dual capa­bil­ity will need a con­verter. Keep in mind that you will require an adap­tor which will allow you to use a US power cord in an over­seas outlet.

Can I use my CPAP with a battery?
Using CPAP with a bat­tery requires some plan­ning and you need to con­sult your CPAP sup­plier well before leav­ing. Some newer CPAP machines are able to oper­ate directly from a bat­tery in which case you will only need the adap­tor from car to CPAP machine. Other machines will oper­ate if a suit­able inverter is used. An inverter is a device that takes input from a bat­tery (12V DC) and makes it into a sim­i­lar volt­age to nor­mal mains power (240V AC).

You should be aware that dif­fer­ent invert­ers may vary in their char­ac­ter­is­tics and some may be more suit­able than oth­ers for use with your CPAP machine. Use of an inverter that is unsuit­able for your machine may shorten the life of the CPAP machine by plac­ing greater stress on the motor. It is very impor­tant that you con­sult the sup­plier of your CPAP for infor­ma­tion about which invert­ers are recommended.
 
How long will my CPAP run on a battery?
This is very depen­dent on the type of CPAP machine and the pres­sure deliv­ered. 
 
Can I use my PAP on a ship or plane?
Yes, but because of increased secu­rity mea­sures at air­ports, it may be eas­ier to travel if you have a copy of your pre­scrip­tion for your CPAP machine with you. It also is sug­gested that you call your travel line ahead of time and ask if there is a spe­cial screen­ing pro­ce­dure required to carry on or check your PAP device. See the CPAP travel page for more information on airline guidelines.

Cruise ships and long dis­tance air­planes are equipped with power out­lets that are suit­able for use with most CPAP machines. You must con­sult with the air­line or ship­ping line con­cerned to find out the volt­age that is avail­able to you and then con­firm with your clinic or sup­plier that the unit will oper­ate at this volt­age.

The air­line will gen­er­ally require com­ple­tion of a med­ical cer­tifi­cate by your doc­tor and may only approve the use of spe­cific units dur­ing flight. As these arrange­ments with air­lines can take some time it is best to com­mence these well before the date of departure!
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