Appeal No. 96-0935 Application 08/157,737 Bowman also discloses means for detecting that switch components are not operating in the required manner, in which case an alarm is sounded (column 5, lines 18 through 29). Brownlee discloses a cardiac pacing apparatus of the type that can operate in two modes. The first of these is the demand mode, that is, in response to a patient's cardiac rate dropping below a desired level. In the second mode the rate is set to be fixed and continuous. The problem to which Brownlee is directed is that of protecting the patient from the effect of non- physiologically unduced EMI signals, such as 60 Hz, that mimic normal cardiac rates when such actually is not present, which could cause the pacer not to respond to the patient's cardiac emergency (columns 1 through 3). To solve this problem, an EMI detector is provided in addition to the controller on the pacer. Upon detection of EMI, the pacer controller is signaled to override the demand mode and switch the device to the safer, alternative, fixed and continuous mode. In the Howson system a cardiac monitoring device is used in conjunction with the non-physiologically induced EMI signal of a pain-mitigating device, the latter of which could adversely effect the detecting capabilities of the former. To avoid this problem, a detector senses the presence of the EMI and disables 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007