Read them in this order, because each one only means something if the one before it is in place. 1. Usage — did the machine get the chance? Hours per night and nights per week. Most of the other numbers are averaged over the time the mask was on, so two hours of perfect data is still two hours. The usual clinical and insurance yardstick is four hours on most nights; the therapy yardstick is all of your sleep. How to Read CPAP Usage Hours and What 'Compliant' Really Means 2. Leak — could the machine do its job? A mask that leaks heavily cannot hold pressure, and the machine stops being able to tell what your airway is doing. Look at how long the night spent in large-leak territory, not the peak number — a thirty-second roll-over blip is noise; forty minutes is a fitting problem. Each brand reports leak differently (ResMed shows excess leak, Philips shows total leak), so compare against your own machine's scale. CPAP Leak Rate: What's Acceptable and How to Fix High Leaks 3. AHI — what was left over. Events per hour of use. The convention most clinicians use is "under 5 is treated", and most people on well-fitted therapy sit well under that. Two things matter more than any single night: the trend over a couple of weeks, and the spread — a quiet 1.2 one night and 6 the next says "something was different that night" (position, alcohol, a cold, a leak) more than it says "the therapy is failing". If the events are mostly clear airway rather than obstructive, that is a separate conversation worth having with your clinician. What Is a Good AHI on CPAP? AHI Ranges and Residual AHI Explained 4. How you feel. Not a number, but the point. Good numbers and a bad morning is a real and common pattern with its own list of causes. Still Tired on CPAP With Good Numbers? Reasons and Next Steps What we will not do here is tell you what your pressure should be. The three numbers above, over two weeks, are exactly what to bring to the person who can. Nothing on SomniTalk is medical advice. Talk to your own clinician before changing therapy.

AHI — the average number of apneas and hypopneas scored per hour of therapy — is the number everybody fixates on, because it is a single digit and it goes up and down. It is genuinely useful. It is also routinely over-read. Things worth holding onto: It is an average over a whole night. Two nights with the same AHI can look nothing alike: one with events scattered evenly, one with a clean first half and a wall of events at 5 a.m. The second is telling you something the number is hiding. Night-to-night variation is normal. Alcohol, a cold, a late meal, sleeping on your back, a bad mask night, or simply more REM will all move it. A single high night is not a trend; three weeks of drift is. Your machine scores events its own way. Manufacturers do not all define or detect events identically, and no home device is doing what a scored sleep study does. Compare your machine against itself over time, not against a friend's different machine. A low AHI does not automatically mean you feel well. Leak, arousals, mask discomfort and plain insufficient sleep are not in that number at all. The useful question is almost never "is 3.2 good?". It is "what changed, and does the shape of my nights match how I feel?". If you want the longer version, the Reading Your CPAP Data section of the Library covers AHI, RDI and how severity bands are drawn. Nothing on SomniTalk is medical advice. Talk to your own clinician before changing therapy.

Speaking for the people who arrive at this thread through a search at 2 a.m.: the number you are staring at is a description of one night of breathing. It is not a report card and it is not a verdict. The two questions worth asking of any night's data are "is anything trending", and "does this match how I feel". If the answer to either is worrying — the trend is going the wrong way over weeks, or you feel steadily worse — that is precisely the material to bring to an appointment, and it is far more useful than a single screenshot. Nothing on SomniTalk is medical advice. Talk to your own clinician before changing therapy.