A substantial marketplace is developing online for pre-owned CPAP masks and machines. Sites like craigslist and ebay offer used CPAP masks and machines at heavily reduced prices, giving many access to CPAP supplies they otherwise would not be able to afford. The benefits are undeniable, and lots of good has come from this marketplace. But I was recently talking… Continue

It's a dirty little secret of Respironics, ResMed and other CPAP manufacturers, but one that touches the lives of each and every one of us, especially in these difficult economic times: vendors of CPAP equipment aren't allowed to advertise CPAPs below a certain price that the CPAP manufacturers dictate. The result is that you will more often than not pay more… Continue

Here at SleepGuide, ResMed and Respironics have always loomed large as the big boys of the Sleep Apnea industry. Bad news for us, the patients, because that kind of duopoly can't be good for competition and innovation, the two forces we see as critical to moving these devices forward in terms of ease of use and comfort for patients. So we were delighted to see… Continue

Sleep Apnea is hard enough as it is without doctors making our lives even harder. Of course not all doctors are ignorant, stupid and incompetent. But Bill's doctor certainly is.



Bill is a dear friend of the family who has severe sleep apnea, along with a host of other problems such as diabetes and heart disease, probably brought on in part by not… Continue

My grandmother, quoting Benjamin Franklin, used to tell us kids that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." As Barack Obama and his administration consider their health care priorities, I respectfully remind our President-elect of this old truism. Aggressive diagnosis and treatment of the estimated 30 million Americans with Sleep Apnea is the ounce… Continue

The plot thickens. I learned from one of the comments on yesterday's blog that there is "a clash of wills between the medical profession & the rights of US CPAPers to actively get involved in our own monitoring & regulation." Moreover, in the U.S. it is against the law for manufacturers of CPAP devices to explain to people how to change the settings on their machine.



So the powers that be have decided that we CPAPers are too stupid and inept to analyze compliance… Continue

Entry: to give someone the run·around

Pronunciation: \ˈrə-nə-raund\

: to act in a way which makes it difficult for someone to do something, for example by refusing to tell them things they need to know.



My friend Dan knows he has obstructive sleep apnea and is trying to use CPAP properly to treat his condition… Continue

I am often humbled whenever I speak to a "CPAP old-timer" about the "bad old days" of treatment when CPAP machines were large and noisy, without any of the features of today's machines that make them easier to use, such as auto-adjustment, ramp, expiratory relief and so on. Having only been using a CPAP myself for a little over a year, and knowing full well how… Continue

Even if you don't think you know what positional therapy is, you actually do. It's the push or shove to your side you get from your spouse when you snore; it's the fancy $150 pillow at Brookstone which is promoted as a cure for snoring; and it's the old-fashioned snoring remedy of pinning tennis balls to the back of your nightshirt. Nevertheless, the term was an… Continue

A turf war is afoot in the Sleep Industry for control over the heart, mind and airway of the Sleep Apnea patient. The turf war pits the field of Sleep medicine, very much in its early, formative stages, but showing a lot of promise, against the established specialists like dentists, ENTs, pulmonologists and others. And although some of these specialists do a… Continue

It didn't have to be this way. When the Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently unveiled its plans to audit the Sleep Industry as part of its Work Plan for fiscal year 2009, it sent a shudder of fear through the sleep community, with doctors, sleep labs and DMEs scrambling to put their best foot forward. With an economic crisis afoot and President-elect Obama… Continue

Quick: who is the CPAP customer? The one who spends each night hooked up to a hose and a machine to manage a serious health condition, right? Wrong. Or at least that is what the CEO of Philips Respironics would have us believe. In an email sent to clinicians and other industry insiders, the CEO, Donald Spence, comforted DMEs and clinicians worried that a… Continue

A friend, I'll call him Jason, was diagnosed with a case of moderate obstructive sleep apnea. A tech came to his house, set him up with CPAP and wished him good luck. That was a year ago. Since then, nobody's reached out to him to check up on his treatment, and although he feels better using the CPAP, he has grown increasingly frustrated with being tethered to a… Continue

It's no secret that a lot of people have trouble adjusting to CPAP, or other positive pressure therapies, to treat their sleep apnea. The conventional estimate is that about 50% of those who are prescribed CPAP have trouble with it, get frustrated and give up. Although I believe the vast majority of these… Continue