Patent ID: 8615296

Claim:
A cardiac rhythm management (CRM) system, comprising: one or more sensors to sense one or more physiological signals; a pacing circuit to deliver cardiac pacing pulses; a signal analyzer coupled to the one or more sensors, the signal analyzer adapted to produce one or more physiological parameters indicative of progression of heart failure and a level of acute cardiac stress created by delivery of the cardiac pacing pulses during a cardiac stress augmentation pacing sequence using the one or more physiological signals, the one or more physiological parameters including an asynchrony parameter indicative of a degree of cardiac asynchrony; a pacing controller coupled to the signal analyzer and the pacing circuit, the pacing controller adapted to control the delivery of the cardiac pacing pulses and increase the degree of cardiac asynchrony by adjusting one or more pacing parameters using feedback control using the one or more physiological parameters, the pacing controller including: a stress augmentation pacing initiator adapted to initiate the cardiac stress augmentation pacing sequence having the one or more pacing parameters and a sequence duration and including alternating pacing and non-pacing periods, the pacing periods each having a pacing duration during which a plurality of the cardiac pacing pulses is delivered, the non-pacing periods each having a non-pacing duration during which none of the cardiac pacing pulses is delivered; a stress augmentation pacing timer adapted to time the cardiac stress augmentation pacing sequence; and a pacing parameter adjuster adapted to adjust the one or more pacing parameters using the one or more physiological parameters.