
The number needed to treat (NNT) is the estimated number of patients who need to be treated with the new treatment rather than the standard treatment (or no treatment) for one additional patient to benefit (Altman 1998).Ī negative number for the number needed to treat has been called the number needed to harm.

Where zeros cause problems with computation of the relative risk or its standard error, 0.5 is added to all cells (a, b, c, d) (Pagano & Gauvreau, 2000 Deeks & Higgins, 2010). With the standard error of the log relative risk being The relative risk or risk ratio is given by

The relative risk (RR), its standard error and 95% confidence interval are calculated according to Altman, 1991.
