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To the Editor: In evaluating studies published in 5 widely circulated journals, Dr Nuovo and colleagues¹ found that only 8 of 359 eligible articles reported the number needed to treat (NNT), despite the fact that the reporting of NNT is recommended by the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) group.² Although the authors suggest that NNT allows " . . . comparisons with the amount of effort needed to prevent the same or other events in patients with other disorders," we would like to point out that such comparisons can be misleading.

To illustrate this problem, we reported³ a comparison of the NNT values for 3 interventions: cardiac transplantation, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), and cholesterol lowering. The 1-year NNT was 1 for cardiac transplantation, 4 for ICDs, and at least 600 for a treatment that lowered serum cholesterol levels by 10%. On the basis of NNT, one might conclude that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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