Heart stimulator that provides for timing a premature stimulation pulse
for anti-tachycardia pacing outside the vulnerable phase of a ventricle,
to terminate stable ventricular tachycardia while minimizing the risk of
accelerating stable ventricular tachycardia into unstable ventricular
tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. RT interval is determined
instead of QT interval. Conventional QT interval is defined to end at T
wave offset, which is difficult to measure because inherent imprecision
in identifying the end of T wave from surface ECG. For safe ATP, such
problems may be avoided. Because the VP usually refers to the portion of
the T wave near the peak and early downslope (FIG. 3), in order to avoid
the VP, only need to determine the peak of T wave, then set an blanking
window or safety margin (e.g., 20 ms before to 20 ms after the peak of T
wave) during which ATP pulses should not be delivered.