Patent ID: 7328066

Claim:
In a cardiac stimulation device, a system that identifies an impending atrial arrhythmia in a patient, the system comprising: a sensing circuit that senses atrial activity of a patient's heart including atrial T waves and provides corresponding atrial activity signals; memory that stores sensed atrial activity signals; a processor programmed to: detect accelerated atrial arrhythmias based on one or more atrial activity signal; upon detection of an accelerated atrial arrhythmia, create a template corresponding to the detected accelerated atrial arrhythmia using a feature of the atrial T waves included in a plurality of stored atrial activity signals sensed just prior to the detected accelerated atrial arrhythmia; and subsequent to template creation, compare at least one characteristic of a sensed atrial T wave to the template to identify an impending accelerated atrial arrhythmia; and a therapy circuit that is responsive to the processor identifying an impending accelerated atrial arrhythmia to provide atrial arrhythmia preventive therapy to the patient.