Setting and participants

We conducted this study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), a New York-based NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center with a full range of services for adult and pediatric cancer patients. We studied a cohort of 400 patients aged 18 years or older diagnosed with breast, colorectal, or lung cancer who began their first cancer-directed treatment between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012. We followed each patient for up to one year or death, whichever came first. We used stratified random sampling to ensure a diverse and representative cohort. For patients with breast cancer we stratified by stage and chemotherapy use, for colorectal cancer, stage and colon/rectal cancer, and for lung cancer, stage and non-small cell lung cancer/small cell lung cancer (Online-only supplemental material 1).