TY - JOUR T1 - Is auto-servoventilation unnecessary in patients with heart failure and apnoea? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 549 LP - 551 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00024414 VL - 44 IS - 2 AU - Dany Jaffuel AU - Nicolas Combes AU - Nicolas Molinari AU - Philippe Berdagué AU - Samir Jaber Y1 - 2014/08/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/2/549.abstract N2 - To the Editor:We read with great interest the recent report by Arzt et al. [1]. They investigated the potential benefit of auto-servoventilation (ASV) in addition to an optimal medical management (OMM) on cardiac function and quality of life in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) coexisting with central and obstructive sleep apnoea (COSA). As the interest of ASV remains debated in patients with CHF and “pure” central sleep apnoea [2], there is no clear evidence of the superiority of ASV over constant positive airway pressure (CPAP) in patients with CHF and COSA [3–5]. In our opinion, some aspects of the report by Arzt et al. [1] need to be underlined and discussed because of their potential daily clinical implications as well as the design of future studies.First, depending on the study and the inclusion criteria, patients with CHF and COSA constitute heterogeneous populations with significant differences in the proportion of central sleep disordered breathing. In the study by Arzt et al. [1], central events represented <50% of the total events and there were no inclusion criteria based on the type of event. In other studies, such criteria on the … ER -