Baseline Risk and Confidence Intervals

Prof. Mary Ferrill demonstrates why baseline risk matters with an example for moderate hypertension (HTN) and mild hypertension.

She compares the RR, the RRR, ARR, and NNT for the two groups in this study.

Also, she emphasizes that we need a smaller number on NNT because you want to treat fewer patients to see one additional benefit. On the contrary, we want a larger number on NNH because you want to treat more patients before the emergence of that adverse effect.

Then it comes to the confidence intervals (CI). We need to know its definition, common range and types in this section. Dealing with the mean data or regular CI, if the range includes zero, it is possible that no effect occurred.

Ultimately, we can learn how to interpret CIs of Measures of Association (MOA). What does narrow CI mean? Does it mean the data is reliable? Please share your thoughts below.

If you have any questions about this part, please don’t hesitate to leave them below.