By Shereen K. Lehman, DC, MS and James Lehman, DC
THE NUMBER NEEDED TO TREAT NNT represents an estimate of the number of people who need to undergo the treatment of interest in order to prevent one additional adverse outcome from occurring. For example, if an intervention has an NNT of 10, it means you’d have to treat 10 people with that specific intervention to prevent one additional bad outcome.
As a measurement, the NNT is considered to be more clinically useful than sorting through relative risks, odds ratios or absolute risk reduction.(1) But it’s important to understand the population that was studied and what the specific outcome of interest is. For example, a medication used to prevent heart attacks from occurring will have one NNT for people who have never had a heart attack but probably a different NNT when it’s used for people who are trying to prevent a second incident.
The NNT is typically included in the results of research studies and reviews. An organization called The NNT Group reviews various therapies and diagnostic interventions and lists the findings on its website, thennt.com. ...continued...
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Image: Island in the photo is 'Marathonisi', off the coast of Zakynthos, Greece.
