title: Rate-responsive pacing based on the atrio-ventricular conduction time.
abstract: Chronotropic incompetent patients are unable to adapt their heart rate adequately to the level of exertion. One treatment for this disease is a rate-responsive pacemaker that stimulates the heart at a rate proportional to an exertion-related variable derived from an implemented sensor (e.g., ventilation). The atrio-ventricular conduction time (AVCT), which can act as such a sensor, corresponds to a well-defined interval in the intracardial electrogram. The AVCT is coupled to the sympathetic/parasympathetic activity of the autonomous nervous system (dromotropic effect), leading to a shortening of AVCT during exercise. We found that AVCT is also sensitive to the pacing frequency (pf). Hence, an AVCT-based pacemaker always constitutes a closed-loop system. General design rules for an AVCT pacemaker have been developed from our experimental results and a system-theoretical treatment with reasonable assumptions. Problems addressed were uncertainties concerning the AVCT dynamics and disturbances in the signal. The following rules for the controller design have been derived: 1) The controller gain strongly depends on the therapeutic range of the pf, which is set by the medical doctor; 2) the closed-loop bandwidth of the system should be smaller than the respiratory frequency; and 3) a robust control strategy, capable of guaranteeing stability for a certain set of plant models, should be applied.
authors.affiliation: Ruhr University, Department of Biomedical Engineering of the Medical Faculty, Bochum, Germany. hexamer@biomed.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
authors.forename: Martin P R
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Hexamer
authors.forename: Mathias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meine
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kloppe
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Werner
mesh_terms: D002304:Cardiac Pacing, Artificial / Q000379:methods*; D005080:Exercise Test; D006329:Heart Conduction System / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D005082:Physical Exertion; D012984:Software