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A “New” Clinical Numeric

DR. DAVID EDWARD MARCINKO MBA MEd

This physician-led medical website  http://www.thennt.com/ seeks to explain to patients and physicians how well a particular treatment or medicine is likely to work based on a statistical model called the “Number Needed to Treat.”

Calculation

This is not really a new calculation, as it has been know for many years. In fact, I review and teach it in several of my undergraduate, graduate and business school courses [healthcare administration, statistics, epidemiology, infection control, community, public and population health, etc], and have been doing so for a few years now. My students are always amazed by it.

Brief Definition

The NNT is “a measurement of the impact of a medicine or therapy by estimating the number of patients that need to be treated in order to have an impact on one person.”

Detailed Definition

According to wikipedia; the number needed to treat (NNT) is an epidemiological measure used in assessing the effectiveness of a health-care intervention, typically a treatment with medication. The NNT is the number of patients who need to be treated in order to prevent one additional bad outcome (i.e. the number of patients that need to be treated for one to benefit compared with a control in a clinical trial). It is defined as the inverse of the absolute risk reduction.

The NNT was first described in 1988. The ideal NNT is 1, where everyone improves with treatment and no-one improves with control. The higher the NNT, the less effective is the treatment. Variants are sometimes used for more specialized purposes.

One example is number needed to vaccinate. NNT values are time-specific. For example, if a study ran for 5 years and it was found that the NNT was 100 during this 5 year period, in one year the NNT would have to be multiplied by 5 to correctly assume the right NNT for only the one year period (in the example the one year NNT would be 500).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_treat

Assessment

For more information:

http://www.physiciansnews.com/2010/10/06/new-website-by-docs-shows-data-on-treatment-outcomes/

Conclusion

And so, your thoughts and comments on this ME-P are appreciated. Give em’ a click and tell us what you think http://www.thennt.com? Do you use the concept of NNT in your clinical medical practice; why or why not? Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, subscribe to the ME-P. It is fast, free and secure.

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