Fig 1.
Classification of the QT-drugs according to CredibleMeds® and German SmPC with the respective subgroups.
According to the classification of the QT-drugs used in this study the same drug can be counted in the right and in the left side of the panel. For the individual QT-drugs see in Table 1 and S1 and S2 Tables.
Table 1.
High-QT-drugs and SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs.
Table 2.
Characteristics of the study population.
Table 3.
Proportion of patients according to the number of drugs of the respective QT-category of risk-classification.
Fig 2.
Patients taking at least one High-risk-QT-drug with additional number of ALL-QT-drug(s) and TOP 20 of their QT-drugs.
(a) Number of patients (%) with at least one High-risk-QT-drug (N = 22,599) receiving or not additionally ALL-QT-drug(s) simultaneously. In 44.1% (N = 9,966) of the patients with at least one drug of the High-QT-risk no additional ALL-QT-drug was prescribed while 55.9% (N = 12,633) of the patients with at least one drug of the High-QT-risk-group received additionally at least one ALL-QT-drug. (b) TOP 20 of the most commonly prescribed QT-drugs in patients with at least one High-risk-QT-drug and at least one additional ALL-QT-drug. The number of these QT-drugs represents 85.1% of all prescribed QT-drugs (N = 48,161) in this group of 12,633 patients. *High-risk-QT-drugs.
Fig 3.
TOP 20 of the most common co-prescriptions in patients with QT-drugs associated with higher risk.
(a) 20 most common co-prescriptions of two QT-drugs in patients with at least one High-risk-QT-drug and at least one further ALL-QT-drug, plotted as a net. For example, if a patient received 4 QT-drugs, all possible drug-drug prescriptions of two drugs were generated, in this case 6 possible combinations. The thickness of the arrow is proportional to the number of patients who received the respective combination. The precise percentages are listed in S3 Table. (b) Most common co-prescriptions of two QT-drugs in patients with ≥2 High-risk-QT-drugs. The 20 most common co-prescriptions of High-risk-QT-drugs accounted for 93.4% of all possible drug-drug combinations of QT-drugs with this risk. The thickness of the arrow is proportional to the number of patients who received the respective combination. The precise percentages are listed in S4 Table. (c) TOP 20 of the most common co-prescriptions of SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs in patients with ≥2 SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs. The 20 most common co-prescriptions accounted for 92.1% of all possible drug-drug combinations of QT-drugs with this risk. The thickness of the arrow is proportional to the number of patients who received the respective combination. The precise percentages are listed in S5 Table.
Fig 4.
Number of patients identified by one or both QT-classifications.
The figure presents the overlap of the two patients groups with at least one drug of the High-risk-QT-drug-group or the SmPC-high-risk-QT-drug-group. The intersection in the middle shows the proportion of patients with at least one QT-drug included in both groups (71.2%; N = 18,942). 13.8% (N = 3,657) of the patients with at least one High-risk-drug received no SmPC-high-risk-QT-drug and 15.0% (N = 3,999) of the patients with at least one SmPC-high-risk-QT-drug were without prescription of a High-risk-QT-drugs.