Patent ID: 8560063

Claim:
A method of cardiac pacing in a patient, comprising: applying a defibrillation shock to a heart of the patient; automatically applying a pacing stimulation signal to the heart of the patient subsequent to termination of the defibrillation shock, wherein the pacing stimulation signal comprises single pacing stimulation and is applied by activating one or more electrodes of a first set of electrodes; detecting cardiac activity associated with application of the single pacing stimulation; and selectively applying paired pacing stimulation based on the detected cardiac activity by activating one or more electrodes of the first set of electrodes, wherein the single pacing stimulation comprises a first timing relationship between single pacing pulses and the second pacing stimulation comprises a paired timing relationship between pairs of pacing pulses, and the one or more electrodes of the first set of electrodes activated to apply the pacing stimulation consist only of the same one or more electrodes activated to selectively apply paired pacing stimulation.