Report in English with a Dutch summary (KCE reports 45A)

14 Screening for Colorectal Cancer KCE reports vol.45
Retrospective
study
Risk factor
Screening
Secondary care
Selection bias
Sensitivity
Sensitivity
analysis
Sequential
screening
Specificity
Stratification
Strength of
Inference
Surveillance,
Epidemiology and
End Results
(SEER) registry
examination
Study design in which cases where individuals who had an outcome
event in question are collected and analyzed after the outcomes have
occurred (see also Case-control study).
An exposure or aspect of personal behaviour or lifestyle, which on the
basis of epidemiologic evidence is associated with a health-related
condition.
Patient characteristics or factors associated with an increased
probability of developing a condition or disease in the first place. To
compare with prognostic factors. Neither risk or prognostic factors
necessarily imply a cause and effect relationship.
Screening is the examination of asymptomatic people in order to
classify them as likely or unlikely to have the disease that is the object
of screening. The aim of screening is to detect disease before it is
clinically apparent, and for this to improve the outcome for people
with the disease.
Surgical and medical services that are generally provided in a hospital
setting. In many cases, access to these services is by referral from a
primary care health professional such as a general practitioner.
Any error in selecting the study population such that the people who
are selected to participate in a study are not representative of the
reference population or, in analytic studies the comparison groups are
not comparable.
A bias in assignment or a confounding variable that arises from study
design rather than by chance. These can occur when the study and
control groups are chosen so that they differ from each other by one
or more factors that may affect the outcome of the study.
Sensitivity is the proportion of truly diseased persons, as measured by
the gold standard, in a screened population who are identified as
diseased by a screening test. Sensitivity is a measure of the probability
of correctly diagnosing a case, or the probability that any given case will
be identified by the test.
A method to determine the robustness of an assessment by examining
the extent to which results are affected by changes in methods, values
of variables, or assumptions.
Rescreening offers made to the same persons regardless of whether
they completed a prior test.
The proportion of truly nondiseased persons, as measured by the gold
standard, who are so identified by the diagnostic test under study. It is
a measure of the probability of correctly identifying a non-diseased
person with a screening test.
Division into groups. Stratification may also refer to a process to
control for differences in confounding variables, by making separate
estimates for groups of individuals who have the same values for the
confounding variable.
The likelihood that an observed difference between groups within a
study represents a real difference rather than mere chance or the
influence of confounding factors, based on both p values and
confidence intervals. Strength of inference is weakened by various
forms of bias and by small sample sizes.
A set of geographically defined, population-based, central cancer
registries in the United States, operated by local non-profit
organisations under contract to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Registry data are submitted electronically without personal identifiers