ArticleLancet (London, England)2000
Implications of trial results: the potentially misleading notions of number needed to treat and average duration of life gained.
Article in Lancet (London, England), 2000. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Time-constant absolute effect measures for time-to-event outcomes.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- Role Of Ovarian Metastases In Colorectal Cancer (ROMIC): a Dutch study protocol to evaluate the effect of prophylactic salpingo-oophorectomy in postmenopausal women.BMC women's health · 2022Article
- Interpreting risk reduction in clinical trials for pulmonary arterial hypertension.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2018Review
- The averted infections ratio: a novel measure of effectiveness of experimental HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis agents.The lancet. HIV · 2018Review
- Number needed to treat (NNT) in clinical literature: an appraisal.BMC medicine · 2017Article
- A Lifetime of Allograft Function with Kidneys from Older Donors.Journal of the American Society of Nephrology : JASN · 2015Observational
- Competing risks and the clinical community: irrelevance or ignorance?Statistics in medicine · 2012Article
- What is the true number needed to screen and treat to save a life with prostate-specific antigen testing?Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2011Article
- Calculation of NNTs in RCTs with time-to-event outcomes: a literature review.BMC medical research methodology · 2009Review
- The "number needed to treat" turns 20--and continues to be used and misused.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2008Article
- Preventive health care in elderly people needs rethinking.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2007Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Consider a physician advising a patient to start antihypertensive treatment. He has the unenviable task of presenting often conflicting trial data in a comprehensible manner. He must justly represent the known risks and benefits such that his patient can make a reasonably Informed choice. Should the physician cite the number needed to treat or the average duration of life gained to clarify his explanations?
Indexed as
Identifiers
11095272What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.