QT prolongation alerts lead to monitoring but rarely to therapeutic changes: a prospective hospital study
Aurélien Simona, Tiago Lourenço, Christian Lovis, Dina Zekry, Didier Hannouche, Nathalie Vernaz, Caroline Flora Samer · 2026
Read QT prolongation alerts lead to monitoring but rarely to therapeutic changes: a prospective hospital study by Aurélien Simona, Tiago Lourenço, Christian Lovis, Dina Zekry, Didier Hannouche, Nathalie Vernaz, Caroline Flora Samer (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13190392.txt.
Description
Aurélien Simona and six colleagues check what doctors actually do when a hospital computer warns that a drug mix may stretch the heart's QT interval. A long QT raises the risk of dangerous rhythms. Alert systems are common, but their effect on care was unclear.
The team followed high-risk alerts for ten months in geriatric and orthopedic wards in Geneva, covering 154 patients. Clinicians acted on most alerts within a week. Almost all action, though, was extra heart tracing and monitoring. Changing the drugs themselves happened in only two percent of cases. Most alerts came from stacking several low or moderate risk drugs. The authors weigh when alerts should push harder for a switch.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Aurélien Simona, Tiago Lourenço, Christian Lovis, Dina Zekry, Didier Hannouche, Nathalie Vernaz, Caroline Flora Samer |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 33 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |