Table 1.
Terminology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cancer mortality | Time from study enrollment to death after a diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer among all cohort participants |
| Post-diagnosis survival | Time from diagnosis to death among participants diagnosed with breast or colorectal cancer |
| Death due to (breast or colorectal) cancer | Deaths in which the primary cause listed on the death certificate was the cancer of interest |
| Death due to any cause after (breast or colorectal) cancer | Any death following a diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer |
| Cancer-specific Survival | Estimated hazard ratio (association) of BMI for cancer-specific death after a diagnosis of (breast or colorectal) cancer (including only deaths due to breast or colorectal cancer) with the time-scale for follow-up beginning at cancer diagnosis |
| Overall survival | Estimated hazard ratio (association) of BMI for with death from any cause after a diagnosis of (breast or colorectal) cancer (including all deaths following a diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer) with the time-scale for follow-up beginning at diagnosis |
| Estimates obtained from a traditional, time-to-first-event Cox Proportional Hazards model | The Cox model is a commonly-used, semi-parametric survival analysis method which models the incidence or hazard rate, the number of new cases of disease per population at-risk per unit time. If the outcome is death, this is the mortality rate |
| T1 | Estimated association of BMI with incident cancer (breast or colorectal cancer) with the time-scale beginning at study enrollment |
| T2a | Estimated association of BMI with cancer-specific death after diagnosis (only deaths due to breast or colorectal cancer) with the time-scale beginning at diagnosis |
| T2b | Estimated association of BMI with all deaths following a diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer with the time-scale beginning at diagnosis |
| T3a | Estimated association of BMI with cancer-specific death after enrollment (only deaths due to breast or colorectal cancer) with the time-scale beginning at study enrollment |
| T3b | Estimated association of BMI with all deaths following a diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer with the time-scale beginning at study enrollment |