Atrial defibrillator for providing improved atrial sensing.

摘要

An implantable atrial defibrillator (30) applies cardioverting electrical energy to the atria (16, 18) of a human heart (10) in need of cardioversion. The atrial defibrillator includes a first detector (50) for sensing activity of the heart in at least one of the atria, an atrial fibrillation detector (70) responsive to the activity of the heart sensed by the first detector for determining when the atria of the heart are in need of cardioversion and a second detector (54) for detecting ventricular activations of the heart. The atrial defibrillator further includes a cardioverter (76) for applying cardioverting electrical energy to the atria of the heart when the atria of the heart are in need of cardioversion and is responsive to the second detector for applying the cardioverting electrical energy to the atria of the heart in predetermined time relation to a detected ventricular activation. Atrial defibrillation further includes a blanking stage (66) to cause the atrial defibrillation detector to ignore, in determining when the atria are in need of cardioversion, the activity of the heart sensed by the first detector during the detection by the second detector of ventricular activations of the heart. <IMAGE>