Sleep Sleep Apnea Chest Pain

[Friend]

Hello Everyone

Though I have been using CPAP for more than 10 months now, of late, I have been having severe chest pain, and I was waking up with a suffocated feeling. I talked with my sleep specialist, and he raised the pressure on my machine to 14. I've tried getting used to that level, but I am not able to exhale completely. Since it was chest pain, my husband forced me to see a cardiologist, so did a treadmill and saw the results and said, “Lady, you can run in Iron Man challenge and still would not get a heart attack.”

Any suggestions on this?

 

[danny]

Since your heart has checked out fine, the pain is undoubtedly due to CPAP. It seems your chest muscles are straining a lot to exhale against pressure. It takes some time for the muscles to get used to this. What is the machine you are using? You said the pressure was increased, so what was the original pressure? Do you have a ramp feature on your machine and if yes, were you using it while you developed these complications?

I know these are many questions, but a clear idea about this would help us in solving your problem.

 

[trebla2010]

I think there was no need for increasing the pressure and the actual problem might be something else. I use a ResMed S9 and there is EPR setting on the machine. If your machine has a ramp feature, then it might be required to be set at low setting.

 

[palomino]

As @trebla2010 said, either EPR or ramp setting is the culprit. When I was new to CPAP, I had faced similar problems like you. I discussed with my doctor and we turned the ramp setting off and I was cured of the chest pain. It turns out “off” was the right setting.

 

[MateRuss]

Theoretically, exhaling should not cause any pain since the chest muscles do not work very hard to exhale the air. The muscles on the sides and the diaphragm muscles are the main players in action here. If you are having pain in the sternum area or under the breast region, better get it checked out since it can either be costochondritis and this is nothing related to CPAP. Since your chest test was fine, I would suggest getting your ramp setting or EPR settings down.

 

[SomeGirl]

Hi @Friend, if you have a data enabled machine, I would suggest you take it to a pulmonologist and sleep specialist and get it checked out. See what is the AHI, Leak data and you can work accordingly. Wishing you good health.

 

[Friend]

Thanks everybody for the response. I apologize for not posting the details of my machine. I am using a ResMed S9 Auto Set. EPR is 4 and setting is “full time”. Upon starting the machine, the pressure jumps to 5 and then inches to 8. Max setting is 14 and min setting is 8.0. the time for max ramp is 15 minutes AHI level was 19.

P.S. Got a chest x-ray done by my family doctor who gave all clear sign. Now looking forward to meeting the pulmonologist, till that time keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[yo-yo]

Hmmm… AHI of 19 means it is time to kiss your machine goodbye and get a new one.

 

[devon]

One thought, can you ramp up to around 20-25 minutes and then check, also try setting the pressure to more than 5.

 

[switcheroo]

I think you should use Sleepyhead software. It would help you in better analyzing the data recorded. I think your sleep specialist would thank you for getting that sort of data.

 

[AndTheMoon]

In case you are not too comfy with technical jargon and software, you can press and hold two silver buttons, it will show a screen which says Sleep Quality in the first tab. By turning the knob, you can reach the Sleep report tab. Tap the knob’s button which will take you to menu section. If it says 1 day then you need not worry. Scroll down the menu by turning the knob and you can reach “leak” data which will give AHI breakdown. These are the numbers you need to check.

This link will help youhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lpC5LDFc8w

 

[Friend]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and feedback. Will update my case once I see the pulmonologist.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody.