Patent ID: 8027724

Claim:
A system comprising: an implantable pulmonary artery (PA) pressure sensor configured to sense a pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) of a PA and provide a sensed PAP signal of a patient; a diagnostic circuit configured to detect an abnormal blood pressure (BP) condition providing a differential indication of non-sleep vs. sleep hypertension by: determining a sleep interval using at least one of (1) time-of-day information or (2) patient status information indicating whether the patient is sleeping; determining a sleep BP using information from at least a portion of the sensed PAP signal during the sleep interval; determining a non-sleep BP using information from at least a portion of the sensed PAP signal outside of the sleep interval; determining the differential indication of non-sleep vs. sleep hypertension by comparing information about the sleep BP to information about the non-sleep BP; and an implantable pulse generator (PG) configured to deliver a pacing energy to a heart and automatically alter at least one pacing characteristic in response to the detected abnormal BP condition providing the differential indication of non-sleep vs. sleep hypertension.