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Abstract

A method for detecting and treating ventricular tachyrhythmias of a patient's heart includes the steps of selectively dividing the heart rate continuum into regions including at least two classes of tachycardia, contiguous to each other and of progressively higher heart rate ranges, the lowest and highest of the tachycardia classes being bounded respectively by a sinus rate region and a fibrillation region of the continuum; selectively adjusting the boundaries between the tachycardia classes and between the lowest and highest of those classes and the respective sinus rate and fibrillation regions, to correspondingly adjust the rate ranges of the classes; selectively detecting cardiac events anywhere within the continuum and distinguishing between normal and abnormal tachycardias among the detected events; selectively treating a detected abnormal tachycardia with any of a multiplicity of therapy regimens of differing degrees of aggressiveness, toward terminating the detected tachycardia; with the improvement of preventing, during selectively detecting cardiac events, the classification of a ventricular response to atrial fibrillation as a reentrant ventricular tachycardia.

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