Patent ID: 8112150

Claim:
A method of optimizing one or more programmer settings of a cardiac pacemaker comprising the steps of: attending to a patient with a cardiac pacemaker having one or more programmable settings; measuring the electrical activity of a heart of the patient in the form of an electrocardiogram which plots a sensed voltage difference between electrodes placed noninvasively on the patient's skin as a function of time, for each pulse of the heart, the electrocardiogram being characterized in part by a Q-wave; simultaneously using a sensor to measure a peripheral pressure waveform of the patient as a function of time; for each respective pulse, determining from the electrocardiogram a Q-wave and defining a corresponding time as an initial impulse time (T 0 ) for a contracting ventricle; for each respective pulse, determining the realization of systolic onset in the detected peripheral pressure waveform and defining the corresponding time as a peripherally measured systolic onset time (T 2 ) for the pulse; using T 0 and T 2 to calculate a surrogate pre-ejection time interval SPET for the pulse; presenting information related to the calculated surrogate pre-ejection interval SPET; and adjusting one or more of the programmable settings for the cardiac pacemaker in an effort to optimize the value of the calculated surrogate pre-ejection time interval SPET for the patient.