THREAD: I am continuously hearing the media push the “fatal arrhythmia due to prolonged QT” narrative concerning hydroxychloroquine & azithromycin, & its also making its rounds from doctors hesitant to prescribe the drugs.

Lets go through the data to see if this is really true. https://twitter.com/drmattmccarthy/status/1240981289764818947
The first thing to note is that the medical literature states that both drugs may possibly prolong QT intervals.

The scientific studies & reported adverse reactions from prolonged QT ACTUALLY resulting in fatal arrhythmia, is very scarce & a common association misconception.
According to the FDA’s FAERS reporting system, from 2003 to 2011 there was only 203 reports of azithromycin adverse QT prolongation, resulting in 65 deaths.

During that time, there was nearly 230 MILLION prescriptions for the drug.

65 people out of 230 million prescriptions.
How does something with a 0.00003% chance make its way into common conversation about prescribing the drug?

How was it that 65 people out of 203 million prescriptions make the FDA issue a warning, resulting in prescriptions falling by nearly 50%?

Doesn’t make sense.
With this kind of harsh reaction from the FDA with such a low amount of adverse reports, along with a large influx of medical articles fear-mongering about prolonged QT, you would think the drug cured cancer or something.

Just kidding. But really, its a strangely unfair reaction
Some studies say Azithryomycin may possibly cause a small QT prolongation of about 10ms, while some failed to detect any prolongation at all.

“Prolonged QT is typically misrepresented to be a sign of increased arrhythmia.”
As for hydroxychloroquine, almost 50 MILLION prescriptions were filled from 2007 to 2017.

According to the FDA’s Adverse Reporting System (FAERS), there were only 61 adverse reports of QT prolongation.

61 adverse reports about prolonged QT out of 50 million prescriptions.
CONCLUSION:

Based on the FDA’s FAERS data vs prescription volume in the US, there appears to be extremely few reported adverse reactions w/ QT prolongation, accounting for a nearly 0.00003%, and 0.00011% chance of a common patient having an adverse reaction resulting in death.
Despite the virtually nonexistent risk of fatal arrhythmia, this is the #1 topic the media is fear-mongering abt concerning hydroxychloroquine & azithromycin to treat COVID-19.

With that being said, the media is either very misinformed, or intentionally misrepresenting the facts
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