Heart Biomarker Evaluation in Apnea Treatment

8.3 Procedure

Select nights with longer recording time (at least FOUR hours) and least amount of leak.

NOTE: The acceptable leak for most nasal masks (intentional leak rate of 20-35 l/min for nasal masks and 20-40 lpm for full-face mask). Unintentional leak from mouth or mask equals TOTAL leak that you measure during the PAP titration MINUS the expected intentional leak.

Exclude nights with excessive leak (i.e, large leak for >30 minutes OR mean leak of >60 lpm OR visual outliers in terms of leak if more than TWO times the otherwise acceptable night). The Encore Pro software allows you to exclude these nights from your calculation of the 90%.

Take predicted 90% pressure from acceptable nights

Require at least TWO acceptable nights for adequate study to determine the fixed pressure.

Studies that DO NOT MEET these basic quality criteria should be repeated in a second 4-7 night autotitration study.