The number needed to treat (NNT) is a simple measure of a treatment's impact, increasingly reported in randomized trials and observational studies, but often incorrectly calculated in studies involving varying follow-up times. We discuss the NNT in these contexts and illustrate the concept using several published studies. While the computation of the NNT is founded on the cumulative incidence o...

The number needed to treat (NNT) and its counterpart, the number needed to harm (NNH), are commonly used measures of effect in studies of mental health treatments. The NNT is an absolute measure, which conveys a more direct and intuitive impression of the effect on an individual than the absolute risk reduction (ARR). To illustrate this, consider an imaginary trial comparing the effects of cogn...

BACKGROUND The number needed to treat (NNT) has been promoted as the preferred effect measure when patients and physicians share decision making. Our aim was to explore the impact of the NNT on laypeople's decisions about preventive drug therapies. METHODS Two thousand subjects were selected for the survey; 1201 (60%) responded for a representative sample of the Norwegian population. Responde...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of vilazodone using different definitions of remission. Post-hoc analyses were carried out using data from an 8-week, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of vilazodone 40 mg/day in adults with major depressive disorder (NCT01473394). The primary efficacy endpoint was a mean change in the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression ...

This paper describes a high level library (The Nearest Neighbor Tool: NNT) that has been used to parallelize operational weather prediction models. NNT is part of the Scalable Modeling System (SMS), developed at the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL). Programs written in NNT rely on SMS's run-time system and port between a wide range of computing platforms, performing well in multiprocessor syst...

BACKGROUND Previous studies suggest that lay people have difficulties with evaluating effect size in terms of number needed to treat (NNT), but they are sensitive to effect size in terms of survival gains. AIM To explore whether GPs and internists are sensitive to NNT and survival gains when considering a lipid-lowering drug therapy. DESIGN AND SETTING Cross-sectional survey of primary prev...

AIMS Controversy exists about the clinical significance of in-stent late loss (ISLL) after drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation. We sought to clarify whether ISLL after DES implantation is related to a potential clinical impact. METHODS AND RESULTS We included in a meta-regression analysis 21 trials (8641 patients) that randomly compared DES with bare-metal stents (BMS). We evaluated the rel...

PURPOSE The aim of this systematic review was to determine which dowel (post) and core system is the most successful when used in vivo to restore endodontically treated teeth. MATERIALS AND METHODS A MEDLINE, a Cochrane, and an EMBASE search (three specified searches) were conducted to identify randomized (RCT) and nonrandomized controlled clinical trials (CCT), cohort (CS), and case control ...

In the German EvAKuJ observational cohort study, changes in the body mass index standard deviation score (BMI-SDS) of overweight and obese children and adolescents as primary outcome of multimodal (short, inpatient or long, outpatient) weight-loss interventions are difficult to interpret. Published intention-to-treat (ITT) and per protocol data obtained at the end of the intervention (T1), one ...

BACKGROUND As recently demonstrated, random allocation to rosuvastatin results in large relative risk reductions for first cardiovascular events among apparently healthy men and women with low levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol but elevated levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. However, whether the absolute risk reduction among such individuals justifies wide application of ...