The Number-Needed-to-Treat (NNT) is a simple and intuitive statistical concept that shows how effective a medicine or therapy is for individual patients. It measures how many patients need to receive a treatment to benefit one person, and also how many are harmed or unaffected by it. The NNT for any drug or intervention can be easily derived from the outcomes of any trial conducted on it. As most drugs and interventions have been tested at some stage, we can estimate an NNT for many (if not most) of the things that we do, which enables doctors and their patients to easily assess and discuss the chances of a patient being helped, harmed, or unaffected, by a specific medication or procedure.
The Number Needed to Treat (NNT) shows how many people have to get a treatment for one person to benefit from it, or to avoid one negative result. It is the opposite of the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR), which is how much the treatment group’s rate of events is lower than the control group’s rate. A smaller NNT means a better treatment. A bigger NNT means a worse treatment.
Later on, you can follow the “NNT” tag to find the latest and interesting NNTs that we have shared.
