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US 2003/0195573 A1Published application
Method and apparatus for safely disabling runaway pacing protection in a cardiac rhythm management device
AssigneeCardiac Pacemakers, Inc.
InventorsKenneth L. Baker, David Ternes
Life of this patent
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Abstract
As a safety feature for a cardiac rhythm management device in which a runaway protection feature may be disabled to allow programmed electrical stimulation and/or burst pacing to evaluate the device's ability to rein in an induced episode of tachycardia, a circuit is provided to automatically re-enable the runaway protection feature not only upon a software fault being detected, but also upon the lapse of a predetermined time interval.
Claims12
A cardiac rhythm management device comprising:
- (a) an R-wave sensor for sensing ventricular depolarization events;
- (b) a pulse generator for applying cardiac stimulating pace pulses to the heart of a patient;
- (c) a programmed microprocessor-based controller coupled to the R-wave sensor and to the pulse generator for providing stimulating pace pulses to the heart at times determined by the microprocessor-based controller, the microprocessor-based controller having a runaway pacing protection limit for normally precluding the pace pulse generator from applying the stimulating pace pulses to the heart at a rate greater than said runaway pacing protection;
- (d) means under software control for selectively disabling the runaway pacing protection limit;
- and
- (e) means responsive to the selective disabling of the runaway pacing protection limit for automatically re-enabling the runaway pacing protection limit a first predetermined time following the disabling of the runaway pacing protection limit.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.