Sleep Apnea Confusion...

Their is not D.O.T standard. They tried to pass a law but never did. Your medical card is good till it expires. When you renew it they will want to see a sleep report that shows you have been using it and your AHI numbers are 4 or less. 4 or less AHI is considered fixed or normal.

5-15 AHI is mild sleep apnea. They count OSA has to be 10 seconds of not breathing is 1 Event. So at 11 AHI is 110 seconds of not breathing per hour or just under 2 minutes per hour.

The people that gave you the home study test would be who prescribed it. I'm guessing the trucking company doctor. They download the data or the home study test sent the data wireless back to them. The CPAP machine has wireless modem inside or they can hook one to the machine. It sends the data every morning back to the people you got your CPAP from. Then they can see if your using the CPAP and if your AHI is going down. The goal would be AHI of 4 or less is considered normal for everyone.

You can get a heated air tube it help a lot I think. If you use humidity it stopped water from pooling in the cold air hose. In the winter it can get cold in the truck. I don't like breathing cold dry air. So I go the heated air hose and run humidifier.

 

Compliance is normally 4 hour use per night. That the medicare standard most seem to go by. The more you get use to sleeping with CPAP you will use it all night your AHi should drop. My cpap has a display you can see every morning when you stop the machine. It displays the hours and AHI. I had 8 hours and my AHI was 0.6 that how good they work. My AHI is less then 1

 

The FMCSA never made ruling on CPAP that I know of. They spent several year talk about it and wanted to make a rule like you said about it had to be moderate to severe for them to require a CPAP. They almost made the ruling but stopped at the last minute. Now the doctors kinda just decided for themselves and if someone has even mild sleep apnea they say it need to be fixed.

My understanding is if anyone has even mild sleep apnea and they go to a doctor saying they don't sleep well they would treat it with CPAP. 5 AHI or more is the magic number they use for anyone. Now that it out as a possible reason for driver being tired, they screen for it more and say 5-15 AHI is considered sleep apnea so they will say it needs to be treated since the FMCSA never passed the law on the point of treatment for sleep apnea.

 

Even if you pay for a retest and they say you don’t have sleep apnea you still may have to use the machine.

 

They say the home study test are not as good as sleep lab. I don't know if having alergalle would stop you from breathing. They could I guess if you normally breath thru nose and nose was clogged from allergies. Then it may look like you stopped breathing plus make oxygen levels drop that night.

Their is a program called SleepyHead you can take the SD card out of your CPAP and actually see yourself breathing all night. You can see every breath and see if you stopped breathing

SleepyHead CPAP Review Software

Your CPAP should show you a number every morning I guess even 0.0 if nothing happened

 

Get a lawyer, get a Doctor to say you do not need this (industry says 15 events). Sue the ever loving dog piss out of the company, the doctor, and the equipment provider.