Method and apparatus for pacing patients with severe congestive heart failure

摘要

An implantable cardiac pacemaker especially designed for treatment of CHF includes an accelerometer for sensing heart sounds and processing circuitry for deriving from the heart sound information the mechanical AV delay of the patient's heart. The pacemaker's applied AV delay is then adjusted until the measured mechanical AV delay falls in a range of between 180 ms and 250 ms. Further optimization of the heart as a pump can then be achieved by incrementally adjusting the pacemaker's applied AV delay interval until a point is reached where a measure of cardiac performance such as aortic pulse pressure is optimized.