Patent ID: 6247474
Filing Date: 2001-06-19
Classification: A61N,G16H

Abstract:
In conjunction with an implantable medical device, a system for communicating an audible warning from the implantable medical device implanted in a patient to advise the patient to take appropriate action, the system comprising:means for monitoring an operation of the implantable medical device indicative of a danger to the patient and for providing a patient warning trigger signal in response thereto; andan audible sound emitter activated by the patient warning trigger signal and producing an audible sound in an audio frequency range, the audible sound being of sufficient volume to propagate from the implantable medical device through the patient's body so as to be audibly heard by the patient;said audible sound emitter comprising:an audio transducer located within the implantable medical device;a memory having addressable memory locations, each memory location storing an audio transducer drive signal for the audio transducer that is correlated to a particular patient warning trigger signal;a memory address generator providing a particular memory address based upon the patient warning trigger signal;means for accessing a memory location based upon a particular generated memory address to retrieve the audio transducer drive signal from the memory location; andan amplifier coupled to the memory accessing means and applying the audio transducer drive signal to the audio transducer at a signal level sufficient to drive the audio transducer to produce the audible sound at the sufficient volume.