Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 25, 2025

Author Spotlight: Evaluating the Adjuvant Efficacy and Safety of Angong Niuhuang Pill in Viral Encephalitis Treatment
Published on: April 19, 2024
Clinical relevance of an intervention assessed by a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials
Antonio Palazón-Bru1, Alba Moscardo-Descalzo1, Sergio Morales-Gabriel1
1Department of Clinical Medicine, Miguel Hernández University, San Juan de Alicante, Alicante, Spain.
Objectives:
Many meta-analyses usually omit the number needed to treat, or perform the calculation incorrectly, despite its importance in clinical decision-making. Accordingly, we will explain in an easily understandable way how to perform this procedure to assess the clinical relevance of the intervention.
Study Design And Setting:
The expressions of the Cochrane Library and the concepts of clinical relevance and evidence-based medicine were applied. Simple cutoff points were also established to facilitate the task of interpreting results. The method was applied to two published meta-analyses to illustrate its application to real cases (treatment nonadherence).
Results:
In the first example, with a risk in the control group ranging from 0.22 to 0.70, sending mobile phone messages to remind chronic patients to take their medication is clinically relevant with a high degree of evidence. For the second example (single-pill regimen in patients suffering from hypertension and/or dyslipidemia after 6 months), the range of the assumed control risk was between 0.28 and 0.57.
Conclusion:
The constructed algorithm could be applied to published meta-analyses or incorporated systematically in all meta-analyses with these characteristics.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Clinical Trials
There are four phases in a clinical trial. A phase one...
Clinical Trials: Overview
Regression Toward the Mean
Statistical Significance
Nursing Interventions II: Selecting and Classifying the Nursing Interventions

