Choose Location

We provide care in three easily-accessible locations across the Rio Grande Valley.

Weslaco

1604 East 8th St., Suite A
Weslaco, TX
Phone: (956) 447-5557

McAllen

5300 North McColl Rd., Suite 100
McAllen, TX
Phone: (956) 630-1000

Mission

1022 E. Griffin Pkwy.
Mission, TX 78572
Phone: (956) 833-6000

Sleep

Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BPAP)

BPAP is a method of delivering pressure as a patient breathes in and out in order to treat obstructive airway disease and related hypoventilation issues. Most useful for patients who find exhalation most difficult, BPAP is a lower-pressure alternative to CPAP and is sometimes used to treat patients for whom CPAP has been ineffective.

How Do You Know If You Need BPAP?

It is easy to find out if you are afflicted with a condition, such as obstructive sleep apnea, that would require the use of a BPAP. Our accredited sites in Weslaco and McAllen have modern, safe, and secure sleep labs designed to monitor your sleep. These sites will record your brain waves, eye movements, muscle activity, breathing effort and airflow, blood oxygen level, heart rate and rhythm, the duration of your stages of sleep, body positions, and movements of your arms and legs while sleeping. Once your sleep study is complete and has been scored, your Sleep Specialist will analyze the results to determine whether you are afflicted with a sleep disorder and help you determine the most effective treatments, which may include BPAP.

BPAP Treatment

BPAP delivers separately adjustable higher inspiratory PAP (IPAP) and lower expiratory PAP (EPAP). The difference between the IPAP and the EPAP provides a level of ventilatory pressure support that is useful in augmenting ventilation in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and concomitant hypoventilation as well as for patients manifesting any of the various hypoventilation syndromes.

Patients with OSA and hypoventilation include those with Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome (OHS) and Overlap Syndrome (OSA and COPD). BPAP is also useful for treating patients who have been unable to tolerate/acclimate to CPAP, the latter often manifesting in complaints of excessive pressure and/or difficulty breathing out against the prescribed CPAP level.

The EPAP of BPAP can generally be set to a lower level than the CPAP level, the resulting pressure support making it easier to breathe out against the pressure. BPAP’s “pressure support” makes breathing easier for patients afflicted with COPD, asthma, and other respiratory diseases in which difficulty exhaling is a predominant feature.