• Matthew R Ebben, Mariya Narizhnaya, Alan Z Segal, Daniel Barone, and Ana C Krieger.
• Department of Neurology, Center for Sleep Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, 425 East 61st Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10065, USA. Electronic address: mae2001@med.cornell.edu.
• Sleep Med. 2014 Jun 1;15(6):619-24.

IntroductionIt has been found that mask style can affect the amount of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) required to reduce an apnoea/hyponoea index (AHI) to < 5/h on a titration study. However, it was not previously known whether switching from one CPAP mask style to another post titration could affect the residual AHI with CPAP. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in residual AHI with CPAP treatment between oronasal and nasal masks.MethodsTwenty-one subjects (age mean (M)=62.9, body mass index (BMI) M=29.6 kg/m2) were randomised (14 subjects completed the protocol) to undergo an in-laboratory CPAP titration with either a nasal mask or an oronasal mask. Subjects were then assigned this mask for 3weeks of at-home CPAP use with the optimal treatment pressure determined on the laboratory study (CPAP M=8.4 cm of H2O). At the end of this 3-week period, data were collected from the CPAP machine and the subject was given the other mask to use with the same CPAP settings for the next 3weeks at home (if the nasal mask was given initially, the oronasal one was given later and vice versa). On completion of the second 3-week period, data on residual AHI were again collected and compared with the first 3-week period on CPAP.ResultsA Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test (two-tailed) revealed that residual AHI with CPAP treatment was significantly higher with the oronasal compared with the nasal mask (z = -3.296, p<0.001). All 14 subjects had a higher residual AHI with the oronasal versus nasal mask, and 50% of the subjects had a residual AHI >10/h in the oronasal mask condition, even though all of these subjects were titrated to an AHI of < 5/h in the laboratory.ConclusionA higher residual AHI was seen in all patients with the use of an oronasal mask compared with a nasal mask. Switching to an oronasal mask post titration results in an increase in residual AHI with CPAP treatment, and pressure adjustment may be warranted.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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