What I am trying to do, is use a wildcard for character variables (in this case, ICD-9 codes) within proc format.
To keep things simple (because a lot of ICD coding has a lot of suffixes and we only care for the primary prefix), I am using coding for uncomplicated hypertension (ICD-9 code 401), which has 2 subcodes (4011, 4019). I do not want to add a format definition for 4011 and 4019 (this becomes much more arduous when dealing with many other ICD-9 codes). I simply want to create a format by the prefix, and everything after the prefix will be assigned the same format definition.
The prefix code I am interested in, in this case, is 401 (as a character).
I have tried using a colon
"401:" = "Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9"
in proc format (in an attempt to include 4011 and 4019), to no avail.
Here is my code:
proc format;
value $test
"401" = "Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9"
;
run;
quit;
data test_form;
input PatID ICD9$;
datalines;
1 401
2 4011
3 4019
;
data test_form;
set test_form;
format ICD9 $test.;
run;
proc print data = test_form NOOBS;
title "Testing format wildcards";
run;
title;
As for outputs:
| Current Output: |
| PatID | ICD9 |
| 1 | Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9 |
| 2 | 4011 |
| 3 | 4019 |
| Desired Output: |
| PatID | ICD9 |
| 1 | Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9 |
| 2 | Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9 |
| 3 | Hypertension Uncomplicated - ICD-9 |
