Patent ID: 8565873

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an implantable cardiac pacing system configured to selectively provide atrial and ventricular pacing; a processor operably configured to control the cardiac pacing system according to the parameters of a selected mode; a ventricular pacing protocol (VPP) module configured to provide a mode to the processor according to the parameters of the VPP wherein ventricular pacing is precluded in a given cardiac cycle wherein a ventricular event was sensed in an immediately prior cardiac cycle; a rate response module configured to select an atrial pacing rate between an upper rate limit and a lower rate limit based upon a sensor-indicated rate defined by one or more sensed physiological parameters; and an atrial pacing evaluation module configured to selectively compare the atrial pacing rate to an intrinsic rate and rely upon the intrinsic rate if a first condition is met wherein the first condition includes the intrinsic rate being lower than the atrial pacing rate.