ArticleCMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne2008
The "number needed to treat" turns 20--and continues to be used and misused.
Article in CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
31 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Time to Benefit of Surgery vs Targeted Medical Therapy for Patients With Primary Aldosteronism: A Meta-analysis.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2024Pooled it
- Utility of the number needed to treat in paediatric haematological cancer randomised controlled treatment trials: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2019Pooled it
- Efficacy of statins for primary prevention in people at low cardiovascular risk: a meta-analysis.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2011 · on this mapPooled it
- Trial
- Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Stroke Motor Recovery: What the TRANSPORT2 Trial Taught Us.Stroke · 2026Review
- Strengths and pitfalls of NNT and NNH in early breast cancer escalation trials.Breast (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2026Article
- SUDEP Awareness and Effect on Parental Trauma, Grief, and Coping After the Death of a Child: A Qualitative Investigation.Neurology · 2026Article
- Family Pharmacist System for Patients With Chronic Cardiovascular or Endocrine Disease.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Article
- Reinforcement Learning to Prevent Acute Care Events Among Medicaid Populations: Mixed Methods Study.JMIR AI · 2025Article
- The Preventive Effects of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and SGLT2 Inhibitors on Cancer Metastasis: A Network Meta-Analysis of 67 Randomized Controlled Trials.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- The changing cost-effectiveness of primary HIV prevention: simple calculations of direct effects.Journal of the International AIDS Society · 2025Article
- The Composite Number Needed to Treat for Semaglutide in Populations with Overweight or Obesity and Established Cardiovascular Disease Without Diabetes.Advances in therapy · 2025Article
- IAPN: a simple framework for evaluating whether a population-based risk stratification tool will be cost-effective before implementation.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2024Article
- Does Hospital Admission/Observation for Chest Pain Improve Patient Outcomes after Emergency Department Evaluation for Suspected Acute Coronary Syndrome?Journal of general internal medicine · 2022Article
- Concept of the Number Needed to Treat for the Analysis of Pain Relief Outcomes in Patients Treated with Spinal Cord Stimulation.Biomedicines · 2022Review
- Availability and use of number needed to treat (NNT) based decision aids for pharmaceutical interventions.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2021Review
- Interpretation of chronic pain clinical trial outcomes: IMMPACT recommended considerations.Pain · 2020 · on this mapArticle
- Augmented Reality.AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology · 2020Article
- The Ambulatory Teaching Minute: Development of Brief, Case-Based, Evidence-Based Medicine Exercises for the Internal Medicine Resident Continuity Clinic.MedEdPORTAL : the journal of teaching and learning resources · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.