ADECA Blog Series

August changes to the QTdrugs List and List of Drugs to Avoid in cLQTS

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, several drugs already on the market were widely touted as potentially effective and were often prescribed in the hope that they could alter the course of COVID-19. Many of those drugs were originally developed for uses other than to treat a viral infection and were prescribed either off label, under “compassionate use” protocols or the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

Merriam-Webster defines contraindicated as “not advised as a course of treatment or procedure” but the definition fails to address who or what type of organization/agency should have the authority to decide if a treatment is contraindicated under certain conditions...

A century ago, Drs. Bazett and Fridericia separately and simultaneously published their recommendations for how to correct the QT interval for differences in heart rate.  Bazett recommended dividing the QT by the square root of the heart rate (measured as RR interval) and Fridericia recommended dividing QT by the cube root of RR...

Health screening is an established component of high-quality medical care and doctors regularly screen their patients for disease risk markers such as high cholesterol or hypertension. Yet, little progress has been made in finding ways to prevent one major problem, sudden cardiac death (SCD) which, according to the American Heart Association (AHA), is responsible for approximately 370,000 deaths annually in the US.

Prolongation of the QT interval is a well-established risk factor that predicts increased mortality from sudden cardiac death.1 Identification of patients with the highest risk of QT prolongation and associated adverse outcomes has been facilitated by the use of QT risk scores that have greater predictive accuracy than the QT interval alone.