(5 out of 5) by Brian K, Northbrook, IL

"The software arrived quickly and was easy to install (comparable to installing a printer with drivers and software; I have Windows XP SP3) and use.

Transferring data is slightly more straight-forward and much faster over the USB cable than with the data card. Using the USB connection also has the benefit that you can make settings changes to the machine, and it appears you can view an active therapy session (though I haven't actually tried it myself).

The documentation is clear as far as what it contains, but assumes that the user is a clinician and will understand the differences between apneas and hypopneas, central versus obstructed, cardiac artifacts, etc.

I've done a considerable amount of reading at cpaptalk.com, so I was able to understand pretty much everything except (flow limitation) runs and cycle states.

Puritan Bennett (part of Covidien) Tech Support was able to send me a little bit of additional information.

FLRs are defined as flow with an amplitude less than 50% of the average amplitude over the last eight cycles.

The cycle states graph is not displayed with any units, but as best as I can interpret, it represents some sort of relative recent flow amplitude (FLR events coincide with consecutive dips in the cycle states graph).

I really would have liked to have seen that information included in the documentation that came with the software.

The software will allow you to aggregate multiple sessions of data, so you can compute your AHI or view the graphs over a one week period, for example, to check trends with fewer daily ups and downs.

You can also zoom into smaller time periods on the graphs to see more detail. It would be even nicer if you could get enough detail (sub-minute) to get an estimated event duration, but this does not currently seem to be possible. (I'm guessing that the information is not even stored at that resolution due to memory limitations.)

The export function gives you usage data and computed indicies, but not event-level data.

All information is stored and grouped by patient (associated with a machine serial number), so the software can really shine if you have local family or friends (or perhaps AWAKE members?) also using machines in the Sandman line."