What does a lower NNT imply about a treatment?

A lower Number Needed to Treat (NNT) indicates that fewer patients need to be treated with the intervention to prevent one additional adverse outcome, such as a disease, complication, or death. This suggests that the treatment is more effective because it achieves beneficial outcomes with a smaller cohort of patients.

In clinical practice, a lower NNT is often desirable as it implies that the treatment is efficient; providers can help patients more effectively with fewer interventions. For example, an NNT of 5 means that treating five individuals would result in one extra positive outcome, whereas an NNT of 20 would mean that you would need to treat 20 individuals for the same benefit. Thus, the lower NNT directly reflects a higher effectiveness of the treatment being analyzed.