Patent ID: 7738955

Claim:
An implantable medical device (IMD) comprising: a processing unit for controlling the IMD and including a ventricular pacing protocol (VPP) module for selectively operating the IMD in an atrial based pacing mode or a dual chamber based pacing mode, wherein VPP is a pacing protocol that utilizes an atrial based pacing mode while sensing for intrinsic AV conduction, wherein the pacing mode permits a full cardiac cycle between two successive atrial pacing pulses to elapse without ventricular activity and delivers a ventricular pacing pulse in a cardiac cycle immediately following the cardiac cycle that is permitted to elapse without ventricular activity; a pulse generator for selectively providing cardiac pacing under the control of the processing unit; an intrinsic conduction checking module communicatively coupled with the processing unit and causing the processing unit to perform conduction checks when operating in the dual chamber based pacing mode, the conduction checks occurring according to a predetermined pattern; and an AV interval module for varying a duration of an AV interval when operating in the dual chamber based pacing mode and based upon the predetermined pattern.