Patent Document ID: 7783349
Application ID: 11279188
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A neural stimulation system to modulate autonomic balance between parasympathetic tone and sympathetic tone in an autonomic nervous system (ANS), the system comprising: a neural stimulator adapted to generate a stimulation signal adapted to stimulate an autonomic neural target to modulate the autonomic balance in the ANS; a premature ventricular contraction (PVC) event detector; a heart rate detector; an analyzer adapted to, in response to a PVC event signal from the PVC event detector, measure heart rate turbulence (HRT) using pre-PVC heart rate data and post-PVC heart rate data to generate an autonomic balance indicator (ABI); and a controller adapted to implement a neural stimulation therapy using the neural stimulator and the analyzer to modulate the autonomic balance in the ANS, wherein the analyzer is configured to generate a plurality of ABIs at discrete times during the neural stimulation therapy, wherein the controller includes a memory, and wherein for each discrete time for which the analyzer generates one of the ABIs, the controller is adapted to: perform the neural stimulation therapy in a closed loop to achieve a desired autonomic balance for the ANS, wherein, in performing the neural stimulation therapy in a closed loop, the controller is configured to: receive the ABI from the analyzer, compare the received ABI to a target ABI stored in the memory to determine an error between the received ABI and the target ABI, use the error to provide stimulation control feedback, and use the stimulation control feedback to control the neural stimulator to achieve the desired autonomic balance for the ANS, wherein the target ABI is representative of the desired autonomic balance for the ANS.