Patent ID: 6067473
Filing Date: 2000-05-23
Classification: A61N

Abstract:
A method of providing an audible warning from an implantable medical device implanted in a patient and communicating the warning in audible sound in an audio frequency range that may be audibly heard by the patient and/or medical care provider wherein the audible sound signifies a real time operation of the implantable medical device, the signification of the real time operation comprising:providing an audio transducer located within the implantable medical device;providing memory in the implantable medical device having memory locations denoted by memory addresses;storing at least one audio transducer drive signal at a memory location denoted by a memory address for application to the audio transducer correlated to a real time operation of the implantable medical device to cause the audio transducer to emit the audible sound that signifies the real time operation;performing the real time operation;generating the memory address of the audio transducer drive signal correlated with the real time operation of the implantable medical device; andusing the generated memory address to retrieve the audio transducer drive signal from the memory and applying the audio transducer drive signal to the audio transducer in association with the real time operation of the implantable medical device, the audible sound being emitted by the audio transducer means in timed relation to the operation of the implantable medical device.