Heller and Dobson used the disease impact number (DIN) to provide a population perspective by taking into account the number of people in the population with the disease. It is defined as the number of people with the target disease for whom an event will be prevented by an intervention. The authors are from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales and University of Queensland in Australia.
disease impact number (DIN) =
= 1 / ((absolute risk reduction) * (proportion of people with disease who were exposed to an intervention)) =
= 1 / (((event rate of exposed to the intervention) - (event rate of nonexposed)) * (proportion of people with disease who were exposed to the intervention))
The disease impact number is:
(1) analogous to the number needed to treat for all of the people with disease.
(2) similar to the population attributable risk (PAR, above), which deals with risk from an exposure rather than from an intervention
The disease impact number is related to the population impact number (above):
population impact number =
= (disease impact number) * (1 / (proportion of the entire population with the disease))
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