The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 06, 1996
Filed:
Mar. 31, 1994
Benjamin D Pless, Atherton, CA (US);
Rose A Province, San Francisco, CA (US);
Ventritex, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides an apparatus and method for cardiac defibrillation which utilizes a lower voltage defibrillation output to depolarize the myocardial cells by providing a rapid sequence of defibrillation shocks synchronized with sensed sequential cardiac events or features during an arrhythmia. Each shock may be a conventional monophasic or biphasic pulse. Each of the shocks may be relatively short in duration, i.e. on the order of 0.5 to 3 milliseconds or may be relatively long, i.e. up to about 100 milliseconds. The amplifiers of the sensing circuitry are particularly adapted quickly recover to after each shock is delivered to allow synchronization of the next shock to the next cardiac feature. This is accomplished by using broad band amplifiers which have DC-baseline restoration capability in order to eliminate offsets caused by a preceding shock. A microprocessor in the pulse generator delivers a programmed number of pulses synchronized to the ECG. If a first sequence fails to terminate the arrhythmia, another sequence is delivered at a higher voltage and/or additional pulses are added to the sequence.