Patent ID: 8211033

Claim:
A cardiac rhythm management system comprising: an implantable system including: an implantable acoustic sensor to sense an acoustic signal indicative of at least third heart sounds (S3); an implant heart sound processor, coupled to the implantable acoustic sensor, to process the acoustic signal; and an implant telemetry module, coupled to the implant heart sound processor, to transmit the processed acoustic signal; and an external system communicatively coupled to the implantable system, the external system including: an external telemetry module to receive the processed acoustic signal; and an external heart sound module coupled to the external telemetry module, the external heart sound module including means for generating a trend of an S3 index, wherein the S3 index is a ratio of a number of heart beats with S3 detected during a predetermined time period to a total number of heart beats detected during the predetermine time period.