hi ... if you go that route, you could also use PUTN (I assume the lab result is numeric) and have the format used vary by the name of the test (using foramt names that conform to the test names) ...

data x; infile datalines dsd; input testname : $6. lab_result ; datalines; test a,. test b,100 test a,50 test b,66 test a,23 ;

proc format; value testa low-30 = '1' other = '2' . = '3' ; value testb low-75 = '1' other = '2' . = '3' ; run;

data x; set x; lab_result_formatted=putn(lab_result, compress(testname)); run;

Mike Zdeb U@Albany School of Public Health One University Place (Room 119) Rensselaer, New York 12144-3456 P/518-402-6479 F/630-604-1475

________________________________________ From: SAS(r) Discussion [SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Mary [mlhoward@AVALON.NET] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:14 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Extract only numeric values from an alphanumeric column

Better to create a new variable that transforms them; in a data set try somthing like this proc format; value $testafmt. = ;

data ...; informat lab_result_formatted $50.;

if testname='Test A' then lab_result_formatted=put(lab_result, $testafmt.); else if testname='Test B' then lab_result_formatted=put(lab_result, $testbfmt.);

and so forth.

Then when you are running frequencies; run them within the type of labtest, such as

proc freq data= ; tables lab_result_formatted; by testname; run;

Not tested.

-Mary

--- darth.pathos@GMAIL.COM wrote:

From: Christopher Battiston <darth.pathos@GMAIL.COM> To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Extract only numeric values from an alphanumeric column Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:11:25 -0400

Cool! Thanks Joe! It's save to assume then that I can set up different grouped bins for different labs, and then just specify each in my proc freq? For example proc freq data=YOURDATA; format Test_A bin8. format Test_B bin7. format Test_C bin12.; tables YOURVAR; run;

Have a great day Chris

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Joe Matise <snoopy369@gmail.com> wrote:

> You can set up a PROC FORMAT to quickly bin the results. > > proc format; > value bin8 > 1-2 = "1-2" > 3-7 = "3-7" > 8-high="8+" > other="OUT OF RANGE"; > quit; > > proc freq data=YOURDATA; > format YOURVAR bin8.; > tables YOURVAR; > run; > > -Joe > > > On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Christopher Battiston < > darth.pathos@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hi Nat / Mary, >> >> Thanks for the replies! I had a two-fold plan that I was aiming to >> accomplish: >> 1) Because 90%+ of our lab values are manually entered, I was aiming to do >> a mini-audit and see the max / min / averages / counts; >> 2) Dealing with Transplant, our patients are on immunosuppresants, >> anti-hypertensives, etc. etc. and I was looking to graph by organ program >> and see if there are any trends over the past few years. >> >> Having read your replies, I'm thinking I'll do a PROC FREQ for the >> non-numeric results, with bar charts accordingly. >> >> As I just wrote the line above, is there a way to set up bins by group? >> As >> an example, I have test A with 1, 1, 2, 3, 9 as results; I would want bins >> of 1 - 2, 3 - 7, 8+. For Test B, where I have 0.1, 0.4, 0.8, 2.6, 12.9, >> I'd want 0 - 1, 1.1-2.5, 2.5+. Understanding of course the bins would >> have >> to be medically-determined, but I'm just wondering if there is a way for >> now to set up SAS to auto-bin values based on the values in the group. >> >> Thanks so much for your time >> Chris >> >> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Mary <mlhoward@avalon.net> wrote: >> >> > If these are medical lab results then you may want to do substitution >> > based on which lab it is; for example; some labs could have values and >> > others would have negative/positive. To do a blanket substition of >> numeric >> > when some lab results are not by nature numeric would be a mistake; you >> > would at least want to run transformations separately within each type >> of >> > lab. A hemotocrit score, for instance, would have a value whereas a >> test >> > for a presence of a virus would have POS or NEG. >> > >> > -Mary >> > >> > --- darth.pathos@GMAIL.COM wrote: >> > >> > From: Christopher Battiston <darth.pathos@GMAIL.COM> >> > To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU >> > Subject: Extract only numeric values from an alphanumeric column >> > Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:06:13 -0400 >> > >> > Hi all, >> > >> > I have a Labs result table where the "Results" column has all sorts of >> data >> > (POS, <3, 1+, etc.). I would like to somehow extract only the numeric >> data >> > so I can graph the results but I'm not entirely sure how. I was hoping >> > that I could use if the first character was a number or a decimal, but >> that >> > doesn't work because I have results like the 1+ in the examples, and >> then >> > others like .3a (which I believe is a typo but data quality is a >> challenge >> > left for another day). >> > >> > I could use PROC SQL to do a "NOT LIKE '%a%" for all the letters and >> > characters but that is just ridiculous. I went to Cody's Data Cleaning >> > Techniques (rapidly becoming one of my most used books in my SAS >> > collection) and found the NOTDIGIT function. >> > >> > I created a table in WORK using PROC SQL (I want only this year's data) >> and >> > had set my DATA step as >> > >> > data _null_; >> > set work.lab; >> > file print; >> > if notdigit(trim(result)) and not missing(result) >> > then put result= result_date=; >> > run; >> > >> > The problem is that it returns what appears to be my complete dataset >> (1.0, >> > 32, >1000, NEG, etc. etc.). So, what am I missing? What I'm thinking >> is >> > creating a data set with the results from the DATA step, and then delete >> > those results from WORK.LAB. >> > >> > Any suggestions would be appreciated. >> > Chris >> > >> > >> > >> > >