Related Experiment Videos
An unadjusted NNT was a moderately good predictor of health benefit
Christopher A K Y Chong1, George Tomlinson, Lisa Chodirker
1Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Background And Objective:
Whether the number needed to treat (NNT) is sufficiently precise to use in clinical practice remains unclear. We compared unadjusted NNTs to quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained, a more comprehensive measures of health benefit.
Study Design And Setting:
From a subset (n = 65) of a dataset of 228 cost-effectiveness analyses, we compared how well NNTs predicted clinically important QALY gains using correlation analysis, multivariable models and receiver-operator curve (ROC) analysis.
Results:
NNT was inversely correlated with QALY gains (P < .001); this relationship was affected by quality of life and life-expectancy gains of treatment (P
Conclusion:
Using NNT thresholds of
Related Concept Videos
Regression Toward the Mean
Sensitivity, Specificity, and Predicted Value
Sensitivity is the...