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Previous Volume 340:1837-1839 June 10, 1999 Number 23 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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To the Editor: When Hartmann and colleagues (Jan. 14 issue)¹ analyzed the outcomes of prophylactic mastectomies, they expressed the results as a relative risk reduction. They reported that prophylactic mastectomy reduces the incidence of breast cancer by about 90 percent among both moderate-risk and high-risk women. The relative risk reduction allows the reader to judge the magnitude of the association, but it does not express the clinical implications of the findings as clearly as the number of patients who would need to be treated to prevent a bad outcome (referred to as the number needed to treat).² This distinction can . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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