Depending on the device and the individual, the treatment is considered by some to be a life saver — reducing the symptoms and of OSA, including snoring and daytime sleepiness.
For others, it is a nightmare that makes it even more difficult to sleep because of the noise of the machine, leakage of air around the mask, the discomfort of exhaling against pressure, and the awkwardness of trying to move in bed with all that stuff strapped to you. And then, there is the body image problem…(Arghhh! Do I really look like that???).
Significant numbers of people fall into both camps — the love’ems and the hate’ems. Adherence with traditional CPAP is estimated to be about 60–70%.
Enter the Airing
First of all, the caveat. The Airing — a hoseless, maskless, micro CPAP — is a product that is still in development. A non-working prototype has been created and certain features, such as the nose buds, the soft silicon structures that hold the device in your nose, have been successfully user-tested.
The vents that allow air flow into and out of the device have also been tested and seem to work just fine when someone is breathing through the prototype.
The micro-blowers that generate the air pressure, the key technology in the device, are in the proof of concept development stage. Once this is achieved, clinical testing in real live people will be done to demonstrate that they produce the same outcomes as the full-blown, masked, hosed macro-CPAP.