Implantable system for monitoring the condition of the heart
First Claim
1. An implantable device for tracking the cardiovascular condition of a human patient, the device including:
- at least two implanted electrodes that are positioned within the human patient to sense the electrical signal from the patient'"'"'s heart, the electrical signal being an electrogram which consists of a multiplicity of beats;
a processor to compute the value of at least one heart signal parameter for every beat of at least a portion of the multiplicity of beats of the electrogram; and
digital memory designed to store the computed values of the at least one heart signal parameter during each of at least two time periods that are each at least one hour long, where said at least one heart signal parameter stored in said digital memory is the value of a QRS voltage, and the QRS voltage is indicative of the amplitude of the QRS complex;
circuitry entirely contained within the implantable device indicating rejection of a heart transplanted into the human patient, the circuitry being configured for determining a pre-determined decrease in the median or mean value of a plurality of QRS voltages over a pre-determined time interval.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A “tracker system” that includes electrical leads which are part of an implanted cardiotracker plus external equipment that includes external alarm and a physician'"'"'s programmer. The tracker system is designed to monitor the degradation of a patient'"'"'s cardiovascular condition from one or more causes, These causes include the rejection of a transplanted heart and/or the progression of a stenosis in a coronary artery. As one or more stenoses in a coronary artery become progressively more narrow thereby causing reduced blood flow to the heart muscle coronary circulation, the tracker system can alert the patient by either or both internal and/or external alarm to take the appropriate medical action. The physician'"'"'s programmer can be used to display histograms of key heart signal parameters that are indicative of the patient'"'"'s cardiovascular condition.
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Citations
84 Claims
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1. An implantable device for tracking the cardiovascular condition of a human patient, the device including:
- at least two implanted electrodes that are positioned within the human patient to sense the electrical signal from the patient'"'"'s heart, the electrical signal being an electrogram which consists of a multiplicity of beats;
a processor to compute the value of at least one heart signal parameter for every beat of at least a portion of the multiplicity of beats of the electrogram; and
digital memory designed to store the computed values of the at least one heart signal parameter during each of at least two time periods that are each at least one hour long, where said at least one heart signal parameter stored in said digital memory is the value of a QRS voltage, and the QRS voltage is indicative of the amplitude of the QRS complex;circuitry entirely contained within the implantable device indicating rejection of a heart transplanted into the human patient, the circuitry being configured for determining a pre-determined decrease in the median or mean value of a plurality of QRS voltages over a pre-determined time interval. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47)
- at least two implanted electrodes that are positioned within the human patient to sense the electrical signal from the patient'"'"'s heart, the electrical signal being an electrogram which consists of a multiplicity of beats;
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48. A method for detecting a significant change in the cardiovascular condition of a human subject, the method comprising the steps of:
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a. implanting into the human subject a device having an alarm, said device designed to calculate and retain in memory the average value of a heart signal parameter for each of at least three time periods that collectively span a period of at least two days, where the heart signal parameter that is retained in memory is a value of a QRS voltage based on the at least three average values; b. determining if a significant change in the human subject'"'"'s cardiovascular condition has occurred by operation of the device; and c. alerting the patient via the device'"'"'s alarm that a significant change in cardiovascular condition has been detected, and where the QRS voltage is indicative of the amplitude of the QRS complex.
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49. A system for tracking the cardiovascular condition of a human patient the system including:
- at least two implanted electrodes that are positioned within the human patient to sense the electrical signal from the patient'"'"'s heart, the electrical signal being an electrogram which consists of a multiplicity of beats;
a histogram memory that stores the amplitude of at least one heart signal parameter into a specific bin of a specific histogram, each of the histograms associated with a different heart rate range, the histogram memory including memory capacity for at least one histogram, the histogram including at least two bins, each bin being a counter; and
a processor to compute the value of the at least one heart signal parameter for at least a portion of the multiplicity of beats of the electrogram data each beat of the portion of the multiplicity of beats that is processed being a processed beat, the processor also being designed to increment one of the at least two bins of the at least one histogram where the choice of bin to be incremented is dependent on the amplitude of the at least one heart signal parameter whose amplitude is computed by the processor. - View Dependent Claims (50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84)
- at least two implanted electrodes that are positioned within the human patient to sense the electrical signal from the patient'"'"'s heart, the electrical signal being an electrogram which consists of a multiplicity of beats;
Specification