Patent ID: 7092751

Claim:
A method for detecting atrial arrhythmia for a patient, the method comprising the steps of: receiving at least one electrical signal indicative of a heart's activity; based on the at least one electrical signal, generating a plurality of short-term HRV data sets, a short-term HRV data set indicating the heart's rate variability within a time period of a given length, two consecutive short-term HRV data sets having a given time difference; performing a frequency analysis of at least some of the generated short-term HRV data sets; based on a performed frequency analysis, defining a power level that corresponds to at least one selected frequency component in the corresponding short-term HRV data set, wherein a power level is defined for at least some of the short-term HRV data sets; and based on the power levels so defined, ascertaining an occurrence of an atrial arrhythmia episode of the heart.