Intracardiac impedance and its applications

摘要

A system to measure intracardiac impedance includes implantable electrodes and a medical device. The electrodes sense electrical signals of a heart of a subject. The medical device includes a cardiac signal sensing circuit coupled to the implantable electrodes, an impedance measurement circuit coupled to the same or different implantable electrodes, and a controller circuit coupled to the cardiac signal sensing circuit and the impedance measurement circuit. The cardiac signal sensing circuit provides a sensed cardiac signal. The impedance measurement circuit senses intracardiac impedance between the electrodes to obtain an intracardiac impedance signal. The controller circuit determines cardiac cycles of the subject using the sensed cardiac signal, and detects tachyarrhythmia using cardiac-cycle to cardiac-cycle changes in a plurality of intracardiac impedance parameters obtained from the intracardiac impedance signal.